Caroline was the daughter of Prince Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick, and his wife Princess Augusta, the elder sister of George III of England. That union was, of course, a diplomatic one, something the duke always regretted. “Only private persons are happy in the married state,” he once said. “The reason is because they are free to choose. One of my class must marry according to certain conveniences, which is a most unhappy thing. The heart has nothing to do with these marriages, and the result is not only to embitter life, but also to bring the most disastrous experience on those who come after”1—words that prophesied the fate of more than one of his children. The duke spent his time with his mistress, Mlle de Hertzfeldt, who lived in great style in the ducal palace. The duchess maintained her palace and court some miles away where she and her ladies passed their days at needlework.
One of the functions of a diplomatic marriage was to produce children, and the Duke and Duchess did their duty. There were six in all. The third child, Caroline Amelia Elizabeth, was born on 17 May 1768. Her father’s attachment to Mlle de Hertzfeldt, whom Caroline described as “the beautifullest creature, and the cleverest,” did not make things easy for her because “though my father continued to pay my mother all possible respect, my poor moder could not suffer this attachment; de consequence was, I did not know what to do between them; when I was civil to the one, I was scolded by the other, and was very tired of being shuttlecock between them.” But her father was her favorite. “I loved my father dearly,” she declared, “better nor any oder person.”2 She always remembered him with admiration. After her marriage, she said, “My father was a hero. They married me to a zero.”3 And Caroline was much closer to Mlle Hertzfeldt than to her own mother.
Caroline was a bright, even precocious child, but her talents went undeveloped. Her letters show her educational deficiencies all too well: she never learned capitalization, spelling, or grammar, and most certainly not good handwriting; yet she had a profound desire to express herself, as her letters also show, and she somehow acquired an abiding love of the literature. While her brother, Friedrich Wilhelm, who someday would become duke,4 received a passable education, Caroline was fobbed off on indifferent teachers and governesses who could never keep up with her. Easily outwitting them, she often turned their own lessons back on them with skillful repartee. She was undoubtedly a willful, difficult student, but her preceptors were dissolute, titled mediocrities, poor teachers, and worse role models. She was even denied religious training so there would be no impediment to marriage to either a Protestant or a Catholic prince, for dynastic marriages were the intended purpose for princesses of her line.5 That could be a grim fate, as Caroline knew well. Her elder sister Augusta was abandoned by her husband, Frederick, the Hereditary Prince of Württemberg, and ended her days in a Russian prison on the Baltic where she was probably murdered.
As Caroline grew into womanhood, observers noticed that she was extremely headstrong, and that she could be cruel when she impaled people with her sharp wit. Worse, rumors—never founded, but ever persistent—ran that her morals were loose. Even her parents became alarmed and had her watched closely. Eligible husbands shied away or were warned away because of her reputation. She was still a spinster at 26. It must have been a great surprise when an offer of marriage came from her first cousin, George, Prince of Wales, heir to the British throne.
The Prince of Wales was eager to marry, not for love but money. By 1794, his debts had soared to the immense sum of £550,000 and had become a matter of state business. Parliament took a dim view of paying for his excesses. George III offered to rescue his prodigal son and put him on a sounder financial foundation, but on condition that he marry and settle down. The prince agreed to marry, but showed astonishingly little selectivity. There were other German princesses who would have been thought better matches, but he chose to marry Caroline, perhaps out of perversity; or perhaps his current mistress, the Countess of Jersey, decided that Caroline posed the least threat to her own position.6
There was an impediment to the union, however, for the Prince of Wales was already married. Some years before, he became enamored with Maria Fitzherbert. But Mrs. Fitzherbert (she was a widow) was a devout Roman Catholic who steadfastly resisted his extravagant attentions, refusing to succumb to him under any terms other than matrimony. Accordingly, he married her in a secret ceremony, after which they lived together for years as man and wife. The reason for secrecy was the Act of Settlement, one of the foundations of the modern British monarchy, which stipulated that the heir apparent would forfeit his right to the crown if he married a Roman Catholic. But another law, the Royal Marriages Act of 1772, provided that the heir’s marriage could be valid only with the King’s consent, and that had never been given. So, by a bit of sophistry, Prince George could reason that he was not legally married, at least not in England, and therefore free to marry Caroline. Mrs. Fitzherbert chose not to stand in the way. Caroline knew at least something about all that, as did many. She was later heard to say that her only real sin was committing adultery with Mrs. Fitzherbert’s husband. Even so, the marriage proposal seemed like a great stroke of good fortune, more than Caroline could reasonably have expected, because it carried the prospect of becoming Queen of England.
The Earl of Malmesbury, a senior diplomat, was sent to fetch Caroline from Brunswick. He immediately realized that there were problems. Caroline’s father raised them himself. “She is not stupid,” he told Malmesbury, “but she lacks judgement; she has been brought up strictly—and it has been necessary.”7 He urged Malmesbury to admonish her to be discreet in speech. Mlle Hertzfeldt spoke even more pointedly to the earl:
I conjure you to induce the Prince, from the very commencement, to make the Princess lead a retired life. She has always been kept in much constraint and narrowly watched, and not without cause. If she suddenly finds herself in the world, unchecked by any restraint, she will not walk steadily. She has not a depraved heart—has never done anything wrong, but her words are ever preceding her thoughts. She gives herself up unreservedly to whomever she happens to be speaking with; and thence it follows, even in this little court, that a meaning and an intention are given to her words which never belonged to them. How then will it be in England, where she will be surrounded, it is said, by cunning and intriguing women …8
Caroline indeed had a distressing way of saying whatever came to mind, however outlandish it might be, suggesting that she may have suffered from the pressure of speech, symptomatic of Bipolar II Disorder, a condition that can explain some of her other eccentricities. Right up until her marriage, family and advisers begged her to think before she spoke, always in vain.
After a difficult voyage that tried Malmesbury’s diplomatic patience and talents to their utmost, Caroline was presented to her husband-to-be on 5 April 1795. For George, it was loathing at first sight. He was so overcome that he had to leave the room, calling for a glass of brandy as he went. Caroline, for her part, was scarcely more impressed. “Mon dieu!” she exclaimed. “Is the Prince always like that? I find him very fat, and nothing like as handsome as his portrait.”9 George continued his petulant behavior until the wedding day, 8 April, clearly hoping for some way out. He was so intoxicated during the ceremony that his friends had to hold him upright.
The wedding night was not an occasion that Caroline remembered fondly. “Judge what it was to have a drunken husband on one’s wedding day,” she later told one of her ladies-in-waiting, “and one who passed the greatest part of his bridal-night under the grate, where he fell, and where I left him.”10 According to George’s account, as related to Malmesbury a year later, they had sex three times altogether, twice on their wedding night and once the next night. “There was no appearance of blood,” he informed Malmesbury, and “her manners were not those of a novice.” So disgusted was he with her appearance and hygiene that he vowed “never to touch her again.”1...