Claremont: Princess Charlottte's beloved home

Princess Charlotte (1796-1817), only child of George, Prince of Wales (later Prince Regent) and Caroline of Brunswick, had a short but tempestuous life. The day after she was born, her father removed her to an establishment of her own supervised by the dowager countess of Elgin. Charlotte saw her parents – separately - once a week and occasionally visited her grandparents, King George III and Queen Charlotte, at Windsor Castle or Weymouth.

Claremont House, now a private girls’ school

Charlotte became the centre of a tug of love as each parent tried to influence her. She loved her wildly indiscreet mother but could not respect her; and respected her father but could not love him. She seems to have been remarkably clear-sighted about them both: ‘My mother was wicked but she would not have turned so wicked had not my father been much more wicked still,’ she wrote.

Lake with island and pavilion

Knowing that her wayward mother needed protection from her father’s malice, must have placed a heavy emotional burden on her when she reluctantly agreed to marry William, Prince of Orange in 1813. What would happen to her mother if she, Charlotte, had to live in Holland? When she learnt that that was what her father, now Prince Regent, intended, she broke off the engagement. He was furious and put her under what was, more or less, house arrest.

The belvedere

Then her mother fled to Italy with her lover. Charlotte was deeply upset but it set her free to have a life of her own. In May 1816, she married Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, a popular match at home. The nation, increasingly fed up with the Prince Regent’s extravagance, now had a focus for their hopes for the future. It was also a happy marriage for Charlotte and Leopold personally. They set up home at Claremont, near Esher.  

 

The amphitheatre

The house, originally built as a country retreat by Sir John Vanburgh, had had a number of notable owners, including the Duke of Newcastle and Clive of India. The first formal garden was designed by Charles Bridgeman who built the three acre amphitheatre; then, when informality became the rage, William Kent redesigned the gardens around a serpentine lake. Lastly, Capability Brown rebuilt the house and re-located the Portsmouth road to give the estate more privacy.

The grotto by the lake

Charlotte and Leopold both loved Claremont and its gardens. They built a camellia greenhouse and planned a tea house with views over the lake. There is a belvedere tower from which you can see London and Windsor Castle on a clear day; a grotto; a small pavilion on the island in the lake; a bowling green; a skittle alley; and lots of winding walks leading to unexpected vistas. A quote engraved on the back of one of the benches says it all: ‘constant and never-failing source of amusement. Princess Charlotte & Prince Leopold, 1817.’

Rhododendrons by the lake

Alas, Charlotte had tragically little time to enjoy it. On 5^th November, 1817, after a fifty hour labour, she gave birth to a stillborn son and died the following day. The tea-house was never built and her sorrowing husband built a Gothic mausoleum on the spot. It was demolished in the 1920s and all that remains now is a slab of concrete on which is engraved: My Charlotte is gone. Prince Leopold

Elizabeth Hawksley

Claremont House is now a private girls' school but Claremont Landscape Garden is owned by the National Trust and well worth a visit. www.nationaltrust.org.uk/claremont 

Princess Charlotte

I posted about royal weddings back in February 2011. It intrigued me then to wonder what would have happened if Princess Charlotte had not died in childbirth in 1817.

I was not the only person who was wondering. I learned today that a new exhibition about Princess Charlotte has been opened at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. The curator's motivation seems to have been this year's Diamond Jubilee; he found himself wondering what would have happened if it had been Charlotte's descendents who were on the throne now, rather than Victoria's.

You can read about the exhibition here. It's called Charlotte, the Forgotten Princess. It is on for a year, until March 2013, so some of us might be able to arrange to visit. I reckon it would be worth the journey.

When I visited Windsor last autumn, I was struck by the huge marble monument to Princess Charlotte in St George's chapel, showing her ascending to heaven with her still-born child in the arms of an angel. It reflects the depths of the mourning that followed Charlotte's death.

Suddenly, the Prince Regent had no heirs and no hope of begetting any, since his wife was still alive. The succession was up for grabs. The Prince Regent's brothers had to drop their long-term mistresses and go and find themselves German princesses to marry. No one else would do, because marrying a German princess was a requirement if any of them was eventually to become King of Hanover as well as Britain.

Just by Charlotte's memorial in St George's chapel, there's a statue of Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, her husband. But the written material at Windsor doesn't explain that he was her husband. It just says he became King of the Belgians. I thought it was touching that he had been placed next to her and sad that most visitors wouldn't understand why. I hope the curators have changed it by now. It does seem unfair that Charlotte, and Leopold, have been forgotten.

Joanna

Experiencing the Regency at First Hand

In a fascinating article in the BBC History magazine last month, the historian Stella Tillyard described the Regency period as “an altogether stranger time than we might think, haunted by the madness of the king, shadowed by war and wracked with uncertainty about the future.” The political tone of the period was conservative and cautious and there were high food prices and social unrest. Whilst many costume dramas have concentrated on the elegance and excess of high society, summed up by the extravagance and eccentricity of the Brighton Pavilion, there was also a different trend emerging, that of a growth in evangelicalism and a change in morality from the bawdy excesses of the past.

Stella Tillyard identified eight moments in the nine-year Regency period that caused consternation and amazement, including the assassination of the Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval, in 1812, the Luddite riots of 1811-12 and the Peterloo Massacre of 1819. This prompted me to browse through a Regency timeline and think about those events and experiences I would have been interested to see at first hand:

The publication of Pride and Prejudice in 1813 and of Frankenstein in 1819 and the poetry of Keats and Byron and Shelley.

1812 The waltz is introduced into London ballrooms and gas lighting is introduced into main London streets.

1814 The Frost Fair when the River Thames froze over. 1816 was also a year of exceptional weather after volcanic dust blocked out the sun and the harvest failed. It was known as the “year without a summer.” (Actually I might give 1816 a miss - we seem to get our own "years without summer" every so often!)

1817 – The death of Princess Charlotte, the heir to the throne, not only threw the country into mass mourning but also threw the succession into turmoil as not one of the Regent’s brothers had a legitimate heir. Not a highlight, but a moment of profound significance for the country.

1817 – Crowds attend the opening of Waterloo Bridge, a new bridge across the River Thames named in commemoration of victory at the Battle of Waterloo and opened on the 2nd anniversary of the battle. It was a toll bridge with nine arches. It was designed by John Rennie and the Italian sculptor, Canova, described it as “the finest bridge in all Europe.”

If you could go back and experience some of the events of the Regency period, which would you choose?