CHILDHOOD AND GIRLHOOD.
Sketch of the Princess Charlotte—Her Love
for her Mother—Anecdotes—Her
Happy Girlhood—Her Marriage with Prince
Leopold—Her Beautiful Life at
Claremont—Baron Stockmar, the Coburg Mentor—Death
of the Princess
Charlotte.
It seems to me that the life of Queen Victoria cannot
well be told without a prefacing sketch of her cousin,
the Princess Charlotte, who, had she lived, would
have been her Queen, and who was in many respects
her prototype. It is certain, I think, that Charlotte
Augusta of Wales, that lovely miracle-flower of a
loveless marriage, blooming into a noble and gracious
womanhood, amid the petty strifes and disgraceful intrigues
of a corrupt Court, by her virtues and graces, by her
high spirit and frank and fearless character, prepared
the way in the loyal hearts of the British people,
for the fair young kinswoman, who, twenty-one years
after her own sad death, reigned in her stead.
Through all the bright life of the Princess Charlotte—from
her beautiful childhood to her no less beautiful maturity—the
English people had regarded her proudly and lovingly
as their sovereign, who was to be; they had patience
with the melancholy madness of the poor old King, her
grandfather, and with the scandalous irregularities
of the Prince Regent, her father, in looking forward
to happier and better things under a good woman’s
reign; and after all those fair hopes had been coffined
with her, and buried in darkness and silence, their
hearts naturally turned to the royal little girl,
who might possibly fill the place left so drearily
vacant. England had always been happy and prosperous
under Queens, and a Queen, please God, they would
yet have.
The Princess Charlotte was the only child of the marriage
of the Prince Regent, afterwards George IV., with
the Princess Caroline of Brunswick, Her childhood
was overshadowed by the hopeless estrangement of her
parents. She seems to have especially loved her
mother, and by the courage and independence she displayed
in her championship of that good-hearted but most
eccentric and imprudent woman, endeared herself to
the English people, who equally admired her pluck
and her filial piety—on the maternal side.
They took a fond delight in relating stories of rebellion
against her august papa, and even against her awful
grandmamma, Queen Charlotte. They told how once,
when a mere slip of a girl, being forbidden to pay
her usual visit to her poor mother, she insisted on
going, and on the Queen undertaking to detain her by
force, resisted, struggling right valiantly, and after
damaging and setting comically awry the royal mob-cap,
broke away, ran out of the palace, sprang into a hackney-coach,
and promising the driver a guinea, was soon at her
mother’s house and in her mother’s arms.
There is another—a Court version of this
