Queen Caroline of Ansbach

“ In the month of August Queen Caroline had established herself at Brandenburg House—the Margravine of Anspach's house, by the river at Hammersmith—near enough to Kensington Palace, to judge from human nature, to disconcert and provoke a smile against the smiler's will—for Caroline's extravagances would have disturbed the gravity of a judge—in the womanly Princess at the head of the little household soberly settled there. Never were princesses and women more unlike than Caroline of Brunswick and Victoria of Coburg ”

“ On the very day after Queen Caroline's arrival in London in June, she had dispatched Alderman Wood to Kensington, to condole with the Duchess of Kent on her recent widowhood, and inquire after the health of the infant princess. The message was innocent in itself, but alarming by implication; for Queen Caroline was not a woman to be kept at a distance, or to hesitate in expressing her sentiments if she fancied her overtures slighted by the embarrassed Duchess. ”

“ Caroline’s duties as Princess of Wales began almost from the first hour of her arrival in England. The Court of George the First lacked a Queen, and all that the presence of a Queen implies. The King’s unhappy consort, Sophie Dorothea, whose grace, beauty and incomparable charm might have lent lustre to the Court of St. James’s, and whose innate refinement would have toned down some of the grossness of the early Hanoverian era, was locked up in Ahlden. Caroline had to fill her place as best she could ”

“ There was another life, more valuable than that of the Electoral Prince, trembling in the balance. The day after Caroline wrote this letter was a fatal day to the Electress Sophia. She, the “Heiress of Britain,” had felt the Queen’s rebuff far more than her grandson or Caroline; her haughty spirit resented the manner in which she was addressed by her royal cousin of England, and her wounded pride and her thwarted ambition combined to throw her into an extraordinary state of agitation, which at her age she was unable to bear. ”

“ Oh, my children and my husband, if you are only happy, I shall never regret having suffered and wept! And who knows," she added, "whether God may not have mercy upon me, and whether, by the humiliation I am about to make, I may not really promote the welfare of my king, my children, and my beloved people? Oh, Caroline, I feel a joyful foreboding that it will be so! It will touch the proud conqueror to see a lady, a wife, a mother, who was once a queen, and is now but a sad, afflicted woman, appear before him and humbly ask him to have mercy on her children and her country. ”

“ But these outbursts were overwhelmed in the spontaneous tribute of affection and respect paid to the dead Queen on all sides. Her loss was felt to be a national calamity. “The Lord hath taken away His anointed with a stroke,” cried a preacher, “the breath of our nostrils is taken away. The great princess is no more under whose shadow we said we should be safe, and promised ourselves lasting peace—she, whom future generations will know as Caroline the Illustrious.”133 And indeed the Queen’s pre-eminent qualities fit her for no lesser epithet. ”

“ The same year, seven months later, on October 30th, the ill-fated Sophie Dorothea of Celle, consort of George the First, gave birth to a son at Hanover, George Augustus, who twenty-two years later was destined to take Caroline of Ansbach to wife, and in fulness of time to ascend the throne of England.
The Margraves of Brandenburg-Ansbach were far from wealthy, but the palace wherein the little princess first opened her eyes to the light was one4 of the finest in Germany, quite out of proportion to the fortunes of the petty principality. ”

“ The dreaded news was immediately conveyed to the King, and it was feared the Queen could not live many hours. The King came at once, followed by the Duke of Cumberland and the Princesses Amelia, Caroline, Mary and Louisa. The Queen took leave of her weeping husband and children, and asked them not to leave her until she died. To the Princess Caroline she commended the care of her younger children, and she bade her son William be a support to his father, and try to make up for the sorrow and vexation caused by his elder brother. ”

“ George the First’s contempt for literature made her graciousness the more marked, and perhaps it was her affability and eagerness to please that gave rise to expectations which were later unfulfilled. For it is certain that many eminent writers of prose and verse expected great things when Caroline became Queen; and it is equally certain that they were grievously disappointed. Whether with all the goodwill in the world, and all the power, the Queen could have satisfied every one of them may be doubted, for the literary mind is not prone to underrate its merits. ”

“ The Queen took infinite pains to hide the nature of her illness, frequently consulting doctors, and yet leaving them in ignorance of her real malady. For years, amid the splendours of her court, in the plenitude of her power, Caroline had carried with her this dread secret, and maintained a smiling face to the world. From time to time she must have suffered agonies, but she bore them with Spartan heroism.346 It was only during the King’s absences at Hanover that she indulged in the luxury of a collapse, and then she ascribed her weakness to the gout, or any cause but the real one. ”

“ Never was a lady more favoured by fortune. Born of the great Hyde family that had given two Queens to England—their Majesties Mary the Second and Queen Anne, she married as greatly as her birth demanded, becoming Duchess of Queensbury and Dover in her twentieth year, and paling all the beauties of her own rank by her radiant face. A wit, a termagant, with a tongue like a dagger, and the most wilful of her sex, she queened it right royally, and if the majestic Queen Caroline could daunt her Grace ’twas as much as she could, and that by no means always. ”

“ Caroline could not mourn for ever, and thanks to a strong constitution, youth and health asserted themselves, and she quite recovered her beauty and her vivacity. The Ansbach burghers knew all about her refusal of the future Emperor, and they honoured her for her courage and firmness, and were proud of their beautiful young princess, whom the greatest prince in Europe had sued in vain. Caroline interested herself in many schemes of usefulness in her brother’s principality, and went in and out among the people displaying those rare social gifts which stood her in good stead in later years. ”

“ The queen forms the centre of the group. Caroline, daughter of the Marquis of Brandenburgh-Anspach, notwithstanding her residence in England of many years, notwithstanding her having been, at the era at which this biography begins, ten years its queen—is still German in every attribute. She retains, in her fair and comely face, traces of having been handsome; but her skin is deeply scarred by the cruel small-pox. She is now at that time of life when Sir Robert Walpole even thought it expedient to reconcile her to no longer being an object of attraction to her royal consort. ”

“ If Queen Caroline's young friend really performed such 089varied and such important services for her, she must have missed him, indeed, when he was absent from home. He gives an instance, in his memoirs, of how much Queen Caroline endured for the sake of her husband, in these words: "She works harder than any of the court drudges in one respect, for she passes seven or eight hours tête-à-tête with the king every day, generally saying what she does not think, and forced, like a spider, to spin out of her own bowels all the conversation with which the fly is taken." ”

“ Poor Queen Caroline! with such a son, and such a husband, she must have been possessed of a more than usual share of German imperturbability to sustain her cheerfulness, writhing, as she often was, under the pangs of a long-concealed disorder, of which eventually she died. Even on the occasion of the king's return in time to spend his birthday in England, the queen's temper had been sorely tried. Nothing had ever vexed her more than the king's admiration for Amelia Sophia Walmoden, who, after the death of Caroline, was created Countess of Yarmouth. ”

“ The coronation of King George the Second and Queen Caroline took place on October 11th, 1727, with all the solemnity suitable for the occasion, and more than the usual magnificence. The day was gloriously fine, and multitudes of people lined the gaily decorated streets. Caroline was the first Queen Consort to be crowned at Westminster Abbey since Anne of Denmark, consort of James the First, from whose daughter Elizabeth the House of Hanover derived its title to the British Crown. ”

“ Thus passed away Caroline of Brunswick—a character variously represented by that very unsatisfactory photograph, Party; but, though the likeness has often been idealized by those whose credit was likely to suffer by too natural a resemblance, sufficient physiognomical likeness has remained to show that she was far from being the sort of woman a sensible man would court for a wife, or the kind of Princess that would confer any distinction on the nation that would accept her as a Queen. ”

“ Princess Louisa, the youngest of them all, was by far the most beautiful of Queen Caroline’s daughters, and inherited her mother’s abilities and accomplishments. She married Frederick, Crown Prince of Denmark, and in due time became Queen of Denmark. Her married life was not altogether happy, but she had her mother’s philosophy and made the best of it. She died of the same illness as Queen Caroline, and curiously enough from the same cause—concealing the nature of her malady until it was too late. ”

“ It is given to few mortals wearing crowns to add to their royalty domestic happiness. It becomes you more to ask whether you are to be a great and powerful queen, than the name of the man who is to place his crown upon your head."
The princess was silent, but she said to herself, "If she means to hand me over to the horrid old King of France, I shall say emphatically—No!"
The empress went on. "Diplomacy is the wooer of royal maidens, and diplomacy has chosen you both. For you, too, my little Antoinette, are promised to the heir of a crown."
Marie Antoinette nodded to Caroline. ”

“ Not a bad young fellow at all, though no King. Wilhelmina, we shall find, takes charmingly to him, like a good female soul; regretless of the Four Kings;—finds her own safe little island there the prettiest in the world, after such perils of drowning in stormy seas.—Of his Brandenburg genealogy, degree of cousinship to Queen Caroline of England, and to the lately wedded young gentleman of Anspach Queen Caroline's Nephew, we shall say nothing farther, having already spoken of it, and even drawn an abstruse Diagram of it, [Antea, vol. v. p. 309c.] ”

“ Elizabeth exercised her power directly, appropriating even the credit due to her Ministers; Caroline’s power was indirect and found its way through tortuous channels. The extent of her power, though suspected, was never fully realised during her lifetime, except by a few persons such as Lord Hervey, who came into41 daily contact with her, and of course Walpole. Caroline had to be careful not to arouse the King’s jealousy, for, like many weak men, he loved the outward semblance of authority, and this the Queen was more than ready to yield him. ”

“ Anne and Amelia chiefly occupied themselves with card-playing and the petty intrigues of the court, and the way their father treated them led them early to lie and practise the arts of dissimulation. Even Princess Caroline, when we have107 credited her with all the virtues, remains a colourless nonentity. The Princesses always appeared at court festivities and took part in whatever was going on, and the Queen would often relax some of the stiffness of etiquette for the benefit of the young people. For instance, sometimes after the evening drawing-rooms she would turn the function into a ball. ”

“ Lord Chesterfield further remarks, that Caroline would have been an agreeable woman in social life if she had not aimed at being a great one in public life. This would imply that she had doubly failed, where, in truth, she had doubly succeeded. She was agreeable in the circle of social, and she not merely aimed at, but achieved, greatness in public life. She was as great a queen as queen could become in England under the circumstances in which she was placed. Without any constitutional right, she ruled the country with such wisdom that her right always seemed to rest on a constitutional basis. ”

“ The archives of Vienna were ransacked for musty documents which would show exactly what had been done for other Austrian princesses who had married rulers of France. Everything was duplicated down to the last detail. Ladies-in-waiting thronged about the young archduchess; and presently there came to her Queen Caroline of Naples, Napoleon's sister, of whom Napoleon himself once said: "She is the only man among my sisters, as Joseph is the only woman among my brothers." Caroline, by virtue of her rank as queen, could have free access to her husband's future bride. ”

“ Mrs. Howard found that she gained so little by the King’s accession, that she wished to retire from court, but was not allowed to do so. Meanwhile all her nominations were refused. She seems to have shown her resentment in divers ways. Her refusal to kneel during the ceremony of the Queen’s dressing was perhaps one manifestation of it. With regard to her uprising and retiring, her dressing and undressing, Queen Caroline followed the custom which had been observed by all kings and queens of England until George the First, who refused to be bound by precedent in this matter. ”