The Prince of Wales’s hatred for his wife is legendary. The young Caroline,
Princess of Wales, was a lively, good humored, impulsive, playful, stubborn,
and not always wise woman. In later life, after she left England, she grew
increasingly fat, eccentric, and outrageous. But those later years can combine
with the Regent’s well-recorded antipathy to create a false impression of the
woman who had the misfortune to marry this sulky, spoiled, self-indulgent,
narcissistic, vain, and breathtakingly selfish prince. So here are ten things
most people don’t know about Caroline, Princess of Wales:
1. Caroline was a gifted linguist. She is mocked because her
English always retained a heavy German accent, but she was fluent. In addition
to her native German, she was also fluent in Italian and French, and frequently
preferred to converse in French.
2. Caroline was a gifted and unusually proficient pianist.
She continued lessons with masters well into her twenties, working with M.
Fleischer eighteen hours a week up until the time she left Germany. In England
she also studied the harp and took instruction from singing masters.
3. Caroline was artistic. Most young women of her class and
age were taught watercolor. But Caroline continued to enjoy painting her entire
life, and while in London she also took instruction in clay sculpture.
4. Like many young women of her age, Caroline received
little formal education. But she developed a serious, enduring love affair with
books, and spent her life reading classics, histories, and memoires in English,
French, and German. She was particularly fond of Shakespeare. The diaries and
letters of people who met the Princess frequently mention that they spoke with her
of books. In her later life she began a novel, which has been lost.
5. Prinny didn’t like Caroline’s looks, but in her youth she
was actually considered attractive, with lovely skin and curly golden hair. The
Prince preferred his women delicate (and older, interestingly), whereas
Caroline was broad shouldered and plump. But the Prince’s contemporaries
described her in their diaries and in letters to their spouses as pretty, with
fine eyes, a lovely mouth, and good teeth. While it is less commonly noted,
Caroline didn’t think much of the Prince’s looks, either. When they met and the
Prince famously, loudly, and rudely said, “Harris, I am not well; pray get me a
glass of brandy,” Caroline said to the same gentleman (later, and quietly), “Mon Dieu!
Est-ce que le Prince est toujours comme cela? Je le trouve très
gros, et nullement aussi beau que son portrait.”
6. When the Prince’s envoy, Lord Malmesbury, first met
Caroline in Brunswick, he described her as not as clean as she could be. But as
they journeyed through Germany toward London, he took great pains to impress
upon her the importance of cleanliness, and she did pay attention to him. No
one ever remarked on her lack of cleanliness again. However, Caroline continued
to have a tendency to scramble into her clothes, and she never did care too
much about her appearance. In later life while living estranged from the Prince
in Italy, her clothing choices were definitely eccentric (as was her behavior).
7. The Prince of Wales forced his bride to accept his well-known mistress, Lady Jersey, as one of her ladies in waiting, and actually sent Lady
Jersey to meet Caroline when her ship docked in England. Not only did Lady
Jersey deliberately arrive hours late with the carriages, she also attended the
wedding and even dined with them on their wedding night. At one point the
Prince gave Caroline a pearl bracelet, only to take it back a few days later and
give it to Lady Jersey, who then delighted in wearing it around the Princess.
8. Prinny passed out drunk on their wedding night and did
not, ahem, perform well. He always blamed Caroline.
9. Caroline did not have an illegitimate child in England. A
charitable woman who loved children, the Princess did pay to foster some 8-10 poor
children with farm families, and once took in a ten-month-old baby girl found
abandoned on the heath. In the infamous “Delicate Investigation,” in which the
Prince tried to accuse Caroline of adultery and treason so that he could
divorce her, he paid an unscrupulous, heavily-indebted couple named Douglas to testify
that the Princess had actually given birth to one of the children she took in, a boy named Willy
Austin. In truth, Willy was adopted from an impoverished couple when his father
lost his job; the child’s birth took place in a hospital and was recorded, and
his mother had continued to visit him. Not only was the mother able to testify
before the investigation, but many other of Lady Douglas’s statements were also
proven to be false. Unfortunately, those who write about Caroline continue to
give far too much credence to the patently ridiculous testimony given by Lady
Douglas at that inquiry. (For her pains, the Prince paid Lady Douglas 200
pounds a year for life.)
10. Caroline loved to travel and in later life was able to
visit many of the sites she had read so much about. After she escaped the Prince and
England, she traveled throughout Germany, Italy, and Switzerland, as well as
Tunisia, Greece, Turkey, and Palestine. Her behavior on those journeys might
have been precisely calculated to embarrass the Prince Regent—and perhaps it
was. He earned it.
