THE DIARY OF A LADY-IN-WAITING
BY CHARLOTTE BURY, BEING THE DIARY ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE TIMES OF GEORGE THE FOURTH INTERSPERSED WITH ORIGINAL LETTERS FROM THE LATE QUEEN CAROLINE AND OTHER DISTINGUISHED PERSONS EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY A. FRANCIS STEUART WITH EIGHTEEN FULL-PAGE PORTRAITS WITH TWO IN PHOTOGRAVURE; TWO VOLUMES

LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY: MCMVIII

VOL. I
Excerpts from Letters

[49]
After the examination of the papers, I was desired to remain during luncheon. Lady A[nne] H[amilto]n was the lady-in-waiting, and she was sent for to attend. I believe the Princess has told the whole story to her, and as she is fond of secrets, I have n! o doubt she has heard them all in their details.

[74]
Lady Anne and I began by receiving an ambassador, the second day after she had been installed into all the secrecy of our nunnery. He was sent by our gracious Majesty; in short it was the Vice-Chamberlain, Colonel Desbrowe; his object being to stop my going to Windsor and convey a refusal to my request of having my daughter to come to see me last Saturday. I was just sitting in Lady Anne’s room, opposite to the sofa on which she was placed, when he was announced; she had never heard of his name and supposed that he was a young and fashionable beau. She behaved like Joan of Arc in the whole of the business; was immoveable; not a muscle of her face altered at the eloquent speech of the knight errant. I desired him to write it down on paper, to refresh my memory now and then with it; but he refused. Lady Anne then took her pen, and, in the presence of this ambassador, she conveyed his message to paper, w! hich her read himself before he left the room and took his departure. I think this scene will make a pretty figure in the Morning Chronicle or in the Examiner; but I leave that to a much abler pen than mine.
One day I went with Lady Anne to see the English “St. Cyr,” * at Lee,

* A school founded by and under the protection of Lady Anne Hamilton. [original note.]

[99]
I received a letter from the Princess. She tells me that the paper called the -----, has been bought over by Carlton House, and that the editor, a Mr.****is going to publish a correspondence, which he declares to have passed between the Princess herself, Lady A[nne] H[amilton], and Lord P[---], which correspondence of her Royal Highness says is a forgery. She requests me not to take the ---in any more, and likewise wishes all those who profess to be her friends, to forbid it in their families. One of her Royal Highness’s ladies is much distressed at the continued ala! rms which such threats cause to her Royal mistress; and, in writing to me by the Princess’s desire to tell me of the above circumstances, Lady [----] adds that she thinks she will not be able to continue in the Princess’s service; for not only is it a situation of constant uneasiness, but also of very great fatigue...

[111]
I had nothing to do but to bow and listen. “Oh! my dear [---] there will be such a crash!” “I trust it will be all for the best, “ said I. “Nothing can be worse,” said she. “Oh ! my dear [---],” resumed the Princess, after a short pause, “there is all sort of tracasseries at Lee.” Of that I had no doubt.--Such jealousies and quarrellings, Lady A[nne] fighting with Lady P[erceval], the one supporting Sapios, the other, that is Lady A[nne], wishing to turn them out of the seminary. Then the young Miss G[---] making love to the young captain, and the old man in a fury, and the young l! over mighty cool.--”Lady [Anne],” said the Princess, “ is very much attached to me, and has many good qualities, but has a love of meddling, and prying, and managing, and a want of tact I cannot endure. And, in short, is constantly doing what is disagreeable, and there is not a hole or corner into which she does not follow me--she has such a manque de tacte, that she wears me to death--no, I could not suffer it long.”--”I wonder your Royal Highness did not tell her of your dislike to have any one in your apartment.” “No my dear [Lady Charlotte], I showed it to her, but, to say get out, I could not.” This was spoken with real good nature.
I was unwilling to add my mite of disapprobation against the poor Lady [Anne], and said what I could in her favour--and the Princess replied, “If I had a house in town, it would be very different.....

[130]
Lady A[nne H[amilton] is commanded ‘by her Royal Highness the Pr! incess of Wales, to represent to Lord Liverpool that the insidious insinuation respecting the publication of the letter addressed by the Princess of Wales to the Prince Regent on the 12th of January, conveyed in his lordship’s reply to her Royal Highness, is as void of foundation, and as false, as all the former accusations of the traducers of her Royal Highness’s honour, in the year 1806.
Lady A[nne] is further commanded to say, that dignified silence would have been the line of conduct the Princess would have pursued upon such insinuation, (more than unbecoming Lord Liverpool,) did not the effects arising from it operate to deprive her Royal Highness of the only real happiness she can possess in this world--that of seeing her only child; and the confidential servants of the Prince Regent upon an unauthorized and unfounded supposition, to prevent mother and daughter from meeting; a prohibition, as positively against the law of nature, as against the law of the! land.
Lady A[nne] is further commanded to desire Lord Liverpool to lay this paper before the Prince Regent, that his Royal Highness may be aware into what error his confidential servants are leading him, and will involve him, by counselling and signifying such a command.
Dated Monatgue House, 15th Feb., 1813.

[181]
At five o’clock I was at Connaught House; found Lady Anne dressed out like a mad Chinese.


VOL. II
Excerpts from Letters

[220]
Friday the 25th of February.--Mr. M[----]r called upon me, and informed me that the Princess of Wales had sent for Lady A. H[amilto]n to join her abroad. I can scarcely credit the report, for I well know her Royal Highness has an objection to the meddling spirit of that person. Mr. M[----] observed, that he considered Lady A [----] was a well-intentioned woman, but certainly not a very wise one. “Her conduct,” said he, “in the affair of the News newspaper! was very droll. Do you remember what a confused answer she made, and how she permitted Lady Perceval to make use of her name? What a kettle of fish those women cooked up between them! The Princess’s enemies,” added Mr. M[---], “believed all the parts that could hurt her; and the excuse which was circulated, of the editor of the newspaper being mad, was a very lame one, and did not deceive many people. Altogether it was a badly managed piece of business.” In reply to my saying that I thought Lady C[---]y had behaved unkindly to the Princess, and Lord C[---] also, he told me that he knew beyond a doubt that the R[egen]t had bribed them highly, and that Lady C[---]y, being a weak woman, was compelled to obey her husband’s wishes; but that he did not consider she was a bad-hearted person, and that she had expressed herself frequently in very favourable terms of the Princess.
-Charlotte Bury


[298]
The Princess of Wales ! to the same.

My Dear[---], ---I have been busy all this week trying to make up a match for Lady A. H[amilton]. I have set my heart on getting her married somehow or other to some man; she would be so much more agreeable if she were married; at present she is so full of old maid’s whims and prudery, it is quite tiresome to be under her surveillance.
Lady Oxford has no thought but for Lord B[yron]. I wonder if she will succeed in captivating him. She can be very agreeable when she pleases, but she has not pleased to come near me for this long time past; she has quite forgotten that Kensingtom Palace used to be a convenient place to see certain folks, and be seen by them;
-C.P.

[307]
Lady Anne is en petite sante’ just now; she is truly interesting; yet, as your song says, “Nobody’s coming to marry her,” nor I fear never will; so I and Joan shall live and die together like two turtle-doves, or rather ! like dem two foolish women, Lady Eleanor Butler and Mlle. Ponsonby, who must be mad, I should tink, to choose to leave the world, and set up in a hermitage in Wales--mais chacun a son gout, --it would not be mine.
-C.P.

No. I.--An ill-natured Story.
A gentleman passing along Piccadilly saw a crowd of people at Sir W. Hamilton’s door, where they were putting the coffin into the hearse; but seeing everybody looking up at the window, he looked also, and there was to be seen Lady H[amilto]n in all the wildness of her grief. Some said her attitudes were fine, others that they were affected; others that they were natural. At last, as the gentleman was leaving this motley group, some of whom were crying and others laughing, he heard a child go up to its mamma, and say, “Ma, mamma, don’t cry, pray don;t cry, for they say as how it’s all a sham.”
-C.P.
No. 2. --Another of the same sort.
A gentleman ! went to call upon Lady H[amilton], who had not seen her since Sir W[illiam’]s death. On entering the room she burst into a flood of tears and cried out, “Ah! he’s gone!” The gentleman made some remark upon the occassion, and she repeated, “Ah! he’s gone--at four o’clock this morning.” At this the gentleman...
-C.P.

[384]
The assumed tone of the jocularity, and a straining after wit, or what her Royal Highness conceived to be such, which are discernible in this letter, cannot deceive any one, nor conceal the worm that gnawed her heart. But the constant irritation in which the Princess and the Regent contrived to keep each other, was a perfect game of battledore and shuttlecock; and, if the latter ever fell to the ground, there was always some bystander ready to pick it up again, and thus the game of torment was renewed, and lasted to their lives’ end. It is difficult, at this distance of time, to ascerta! in what letters her Royal Highness alludes to, as having been prudent on the part of her friends no to publish.
Poor Lady A. H[amilton] has been very unjustly condemned; for she intended to do right, though she was

[385]
always doing wrong. A spirit of intrigue and petty concealment, and a false idea of prudence, prevented that open uprightness of character, which walks erect through the world, and defies slander, because it has no little meanst interests to serve. Nevertheless, it will be told of this lady hereafter, that she underwent all the contumely and all the opprobrium of the last public scenes of her unfortunate and misguided mistress, and never left her person in life, r her insulted remains, till they were deposited in the grave, where all things are forgotten. This moral courage on the part of Lady A. H[amilton], by which she could get little or nothing to compensate for the odium it entailed upon her, will be done justice to at last, and wil! l cover a thousand little defects of meaner kind, the growth , it may be, of timidity, of a false idea of doing good--que sais-je? of a littleness of conception, which after all, was strangely contrasted in the same character with a greatness, during the last scenes of the historic tragedy in which she was figurante--that will ultimately reverse the judgement which has been too hastily pronounced upon her. Mais tot ou tard tout se sait; and the public award is generally just at the last, though often too tardily so, to affect beneficially the happiness of the person on whom sentence is passed.

[386]
Any person who knew the parties, must guess that the Princess designates Lady A. H[amilton] as Joan of Arc.



Ladies in Waiting

[[264]
Even in the House of Lords support for the Bill of Pains and Penalties was so limited that in November the Government had perforce to abandon it, but the decision was highly popular with the pu! blic it earned Caroline few well-born adherents. The Countess Oldi still lingered in England, squabbling with Lady Anne Hamilton, of whom she was jealous but for whose continued support Caroline felt deeply grateful. As the Queen sadly observed, “Poor Joan of Arc has really proved herself true to the name I used to give her pour mi moquer d’elle. She has stayed with me through it all and God he knows that was no small trial. Poor Soul! I hope he will reward her for her courage.’
As it turned out, Lady Anne did not have to remain at her post for much longer. On 30 July 1821 Caroline was taken ill with inflammation of the bowels and a week later she died. Lady Anne was with her to the last but she was almost alone in genuinely mourning her mistress. The King made no attempt to disguise his joy and thenceforth he sought to sweep from his life anything that reminded him of his detested spouse.