At last, after no end of propositions, debates, and disputes, Mr. Pitt's suggestion was agreed upon. This was an income of one hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds a year for the prince, besides his revenue from the duchy of Cornwall, of thirteen thousand pounds more. In addition, the princess was to have fifty thousand pounds, besides twenty thousand pounds for jewels, and twenty-six thousand pounds for the refurnishing of Carlton House. {225}The old standing debts of the Prince of Wales were all settled, and this was no trifling affair; for to his ferrier alone he was indebted forty thousand pounds, and to his jeweller eighty-five thousand pounds. This included the four thousand pounds that the jewelled frame had cost in which the prince's miniature had been placed before it was sent to Brunswick. It is not surprising that the bride was disappointed when she beheld the original, after having viewed his flattered counterpart with such a surrounding. {226} CHAPTER VIII. [[A.D. 1796.]] |Long before the first year of their marriage was completed the princess was living almost in solitary confinement at Brighton, while her good-for-nothing husband was leading the gayest sort of an existence in London, courted and honored at all the brilliant parties he attended, and almost ignoring the fact that he had a wife. He had abandoned his extravagant court at Carlton House for a time, because he was not entirely satisfied with the revenue that had been settled on him; so he showed his discontent by assuming a theatrical air of injured innocence, poked his wife off in the country, and continued his shameful course. Then, feeling justly indignant at her husband's neglect, and at the coldness of all of the royal family, excepting the old king, who was always her firm friend, the princess was guilty of an indiscretion, the effect of which went far towards completing her ruin. This consisted in writing letters to her relations in Brunswick, in which she not only complained piteously of her own position, but imprudently made use of very harsh terms towards the queen and the princesses, who she declared disliked her exceedingly, and seemed to take special pains to misrepresent her every action. Her situation was without doubt distressing, and it seems not unnatural for the young wife to yearn for some sympathizing friend in whose ear she could pour forth her {227}tale of wrong and regret; but we know that lack of judgment was Princess Caroline's greatest fault, and it appears plainly in this, instance. She did not write a dignified, sorrowful appeal to her parents, telling them of her blasted hopes, and asking advice, for which there might have been some excuse; but she sent pages of gossip and sarcastic abuse of her relations in England to various parties in her native land, tittle-tattle, unwise as it was unrefined, and unladylike.