Princesses (18 page)

In the meantime, on 5 August 1786 the King appeared in his wife's dressing room at the Queen's House with an announcement that dumb-founded her and their two eldest daughters who were with her: ‘Here I am safe and well as you see, but I have very narrowly escaped being stabbed.' Lady Harcourt received an account of what had prompted this declaration from her sister-in-law, Mrs Harcourt, who had the tale ‘exactly and with a candour that does him
honour'
from the King. The King had alighted earlier that day at St James's, and made to take from a woman standing there a petition she held out to him. Upon which she drew a knife and tried to drive it through his side.

He said that if he had not happened to have seen the woman preparing her petition, and from her eagerness kept his eyes fixed on her he could not have escaped, for she was close to him, and on her drawing the knife from the paper he stepped back. That she aimed a second blow, but was caught by the Guard, and a servant wrested the knife from her hand. It was a large servant's eating-knife with a horn handle, made sharp on both sides … he is not sure whether it struck against him or not, but he thinks it did not. He said he called to them directly to take the knife from her but not to hurt the woman, for he was not hurt.

The would-be assassin, Margaret Nicolson, ‘lived servant with Mrs Rice', Mrs Harcourt heard, and had ‘left her … from being wrong in her mind. She is so certainly on this subject, and Monro [Dr John
Monro, superintendent of the lunatic asylum known as Bedlam] declares her so.'

The thanks given for the King's escape included an address from the senate of Oxford University: ‘upon the miraculous escape that he had of being murdered by that wicked mad woman', as the Princess Royal put it, ‘who, if she had succeeded in her horrid attempt would have made us the most wretched family in the
world
. But providence who watches over all things was pleased most mercifully to preserve the life of the best of kings and of
fathers.'
Princess Augusta described to her brother Augustus the royal family's stay at Nuneham this year, which preceded the solemn ceremony at Oxford: ‘I was particularly pleased with the sermon, which was preached by Lord Harcourt's chaplain Mr Hagget … Good God! My dear Augustus how miserable how abject and how low should we have been thrown if… we had had such an unheard of
misfortune.'

Princess Elizabeth, upon recovery from her ‘great illness', was filled with energy, and wrote in November 1786 to Augustus: ‘Having been some length of time separated from all the family, as well as masters, I now must make up for the time I have been without them.' She had begun to learn the harpsichord, and wished to sing the praises of London now as well as Kew: ‘never has a winter begun more delightfully for me than this one has. I trust in God it will continue so. The constant kindness and affection I receive from Papa and Mamma adds very greatly to it and all the amusements they can think of for us, we are always sure of having.' Still occupied with her studies, she wrote to Augustus, five months later, ‘It has not been in my power to write for some time as the day passes very quickly with all my different employments. So that trying to perfect myself in everything, I hope, will plead my excuse which, if I did set about to do, must be very long.'

The Princess Royal was less contented. ‘My dearest Augustus,' she wrote in the new year of 1787,

I have been very much mortified by a provoking rash, which prevented my being at the birthday. I had the last month worked very hard for to complete four fans and two muffs which were intended for that day. On the Monday I finished everything expecting with the rest of the family to go to London on the Tuesday but helas, when I was a going to get up, I was so red that it would have been dangerous to have moved me. I therefore remained at Windsor, which I shall leave next Monday if no fresh misfortune prevents my going to London.

She took some comfort in the fact of ‘several other young ladies who have been prevented going to the birthday, Lady Charlotte Bertie by a fever,
Lady Frances Bruce by a cold, Miss Howes by being at Bath. The eldest of them having a complaint in her stomach has been ordered to spend six weeks at those wells. I am very sorry for it, as it prevents my enjoying their company, particularly that of little Mary, who you know is a great friend of mine, and was that of poor Lady Harriot.' (Lady Harriot Elliot had, to the horror of the Princess Royal and friends – and as a warning that there were perils as well as pleasures consequent on marriage – recently, and very soon after her marriage, died in childbirth.)

She continued, in her old admonitory style: ‘Pray, do you understand German enough yet to read plays? For if you do, that is the most likely way to make you learn to speak it tant bien que mal but however you must walk before one runs … Pray give my love to my brothers and believe me your ever affectionate sister, Charlotte Augusta
Matilda
…'

‘Since I wrote last, I have had the pleasure to spend many evenings with dear Miss Mary Howe,' the Princess Royal recorded soon after, ‘who I think more charming than ever.' But Miss Howe was cast down. ‘She is very low at the thoughts of parting from her sister, Miss Louisa, who is going to be married to Lord Altamont, an Irish peer of great
fortune.'
Princess Elizabeth, two months later, added to this picture of sisters parted by the demands of matrimony, not a future apparently in prospect for the princesses themselves: ‘Louisa Howe is not as yet concluded with Lord Altamont, but will be soon. She is prettier than ever. Her sisters are miserable at the thought of parting with her, particularly Mary, who has always lived with her ever since she was born and constantly slept in the same room. But they have the pleasure of thinking that she will be perfectly happy, as everybody gives him the best of
characters.'

Princess Augusta was the brothers' most faithful correspondent, giving them news of each other now that they were separated. She wrote to Prince Augustus at Gottingen in April 1787: ‘I thank you for your pretty letter and in return send you a shade of your humble servant, which I fancy you will find like from the forehead to the upper lip. I kiss that, and then the chin is like, for I must say that I don't think that pouting lip like mine, though mine is nearly as thick as Edward's.' She added, having good information from Hanover, ‘By the by I understand that Edward is grown quite a giant. If so, I hope he will never be a grenadier or else he will be quite a frightful sight. Pray send me your shade and I shall love it as much as your sketch, which I would not part with for the whole world. I hope you are still determined to go to sea. It is the finest profession in the world and you are made for it.' But for all her encouragement, Prince Augustus's severe asthma was to put an end to those dreams.

‘I had a letter from dear William last week,' the newsletter went on.

He is at the island of Nevis in the West Indies. He says he is happy as the day is long and that the
Pegasus
is his whole and sole delight and pleasure. He has a little band of music that serves to make his ship's company dance, and he says, ‘I doat to see my men happy.' Everybody speaks well of him and I believe him, as I always did, a very hearty good honest English tar, liking better a hammock than a bed and plain salt beef than all the fine dishes and luxury that townspeople fare upon. He always wears his uniform and curls, and yet looks as well dressed, and more of a man, than any of the fashionable powder monkeys, and talks of affectation in a man as the one thing in the world that takes the same effect upon him as an emetic. God bless you my dear boy, believe me your affectionate sister and friend, Augusta Sophia. I have got so bad a headache, I can hardly see, so can write
no more
.

Augusta continued a fluent correspondent, sending off descriptions of scenes at home that would appeal to or interest her brothers, including an account of a royal doctor's lingering death after he attended her and her sisters for measles:

Poor Sir Richard Jebb lived just long enough to see us all in a recovering state, but was so ill when he attended us and so very weak, that he was very near dying at Windsor and was in that state when he left us, that he was obliged to lay on mattresses in his coach and to go through the park, as he could not bear the shaking of the stones. We did not see him for some days before he went away, he was so thoroughly adying. But as we were on the same floor, we heard constantly how he was. And nothing gave him any pleasure but when us sick ones either sent to enquire after him – or that the last people he attended were the King's children. For he loved nothing so much as Papa. He quitted Windsor on the Thursday and died the Tuesday after, much regretted by everybody who
knew him
.

The princesses' return to health coincided with the excitement of their brother Frederick's arrival at Windsor on 2 August 1787, after six years away in Germany. ‘Joy to great Caesar!' wrote Princess Augusta. ‘Our dear dear Frederick just arrived this afternoon when we were at dinner. I am overjoyed to see him! Quite quite drunk with joy and spirits but not spiritual
liquors.'
While the reprobate Prince of Wales's birthday on 12 August went unmarked for the first time by cannon fire at Windsor, four days later the King and Queen gave a great ball there for his younger brother, the Duke of York. Princess Elizabeth for one enjoyed it so much that she wished to stay on, but ‘as everyone went away I could not possibly stay to dance capers alone so I also returned to bed'. But all the King's pleasure in his second son's arrival in England and in his military successes abroad was
to be swiftly spoilt by the alacrity with which he joined the Prince of Wales's parties of pleasure at Newmarket and elsewhere.

Augusta had another source of satisfaction. Her father this year permitted her to have a door broken through from her bedroom at Windsor to the little dressing room on the stair, so that she had two rooms. ‘I have two nice bookcases on each side of the chimney and my harpsichord so that altogether I am more comfortably lodged than I can express.' She was learning the harpsichord, like her sister Elizabeth, with Charles Horn, a new music master. She enjoyed it so much that she had begun composing, and a minuet and a march were already to her credit. ‘You see what an enemy to mankind luxury is. I have been seven years at Windsor with only one room, and now that I have two, I find the total impossibility of ever submitting to live in one again …' she wrote. There was a very ‘neat' wallpaper in her new apartments and her friends had done many pretty drawings. But as she told her brother Augustus in August, the shade or silhouette he had just sent her had pride of place. It was ‘hung up just over against where I now sit', she informed him, and she thought it ‘very like … I look at it as often as I come in and go out of my room and constantly when I am in it.'

News later that month that Prince Augustus was suffering from ‘another attack' of his ‘terrible complaint' – asthma – led his sister to write again: by way of cheering the invalid, she described a recent family outing to Hampton Court. ‘We did not go into the old straight walks that are seen from the windows for they are like the oldest part of Kensington Garden, but we went to the maze or labyrinth … It is certainly the most tantalizing thing I ever saw for I thought myself near out of it often. And then the shortest turn brought us far from the end of it. Old Toothacker the foreman is still there. I assure you he makes a very venerable appearance in the old gardens for now he has left off his wig and wears his own hair which is quite grey. It
improves
his looks very much.'

Royal joined in the chorus of pleasure at the Duke of York's return, but wrote less happily to Augustus of her lot, which included going to the Ancient Music concerts which specialized in Handel's music: ‘I think that my dislike for music rather increases.' However, she continued to draw a great deal and looked on it as one of the most entertaining ways of employing herself. ‘This summer my drawing has not gone on as well as usual, on account of my having been forbid during three months after the measles to apply my eyes to anything.' But she had now begun again and hoped to make up for lost time. ‘Mama has been so good to me,' she wrote, ‘that she has now taken Miss Meen, a flower painter, to instruct me till we leave the
country in colouring flowers. I continue every Monday heads with Gresse. Indeed if I do not come on I must be
wanting
in capacity, for I have every advantage and therefore no excuse but my own stupidity if I do not improve.'

At least reports of the younger princes were better. ‘The other young fry at Gottingen are the happiest of beings: they constantly write to me of the different entertainments they have both at Gottingen and Rotenburg,' Augusta told William. Prince Edward had been despatched, after two years in Germany, to university in Geneva with his governor, General Wangenheim. She heard that ‘as he is exceedingly attached to his profession, he preferred Hanover', a centre of military excellence. ‘But he soon made up his mind to quit it as it was by the King's
desire.'

The princesses' daily round continued. Errands for their mother brought the elder princesses into the backstairs sphere, to be commented on by the author Fanny Burney, who for five years had a position as second keeper of the robes to their mother. The Princess Royal brought Miss Burney the Queen's snuffbox to be filled and ‘took her leave with as elegant civility of
manner
as if parting with another Queen's daughter'. If the Princess Royal's regal manner disconcerted Miss Burney, she praised Princess Augusta, as did others, for the easy friendship she showed all the attendants in the house. When Miss Burney gave a workbox to Augusta's wardrobe woman to put on the Princess's table on her birthday, the courtier received her reward. She was led by none other than the Queen into Augusta's room, where the Princess was seated at her desk writing letters and was thanked for ‘the little cadeau' in ‘a manner the most pleasing'. Princess Elizabeth came asking Fanny's superior, Mrs Schwellenberg, to send a basin of tea into the music room for Mrs Delany, and all the attendants in the tearoom ‘rose and retreated a few paces backward with looks of high respect'. But Miss Burney rather noticed Princess Elizabeth's bluntness – which she prided herself on: ‘Miss Burney, I hope you hate snuff? I hope you do, for I hate it of all things in the world.'