Within the first few years of her marriage Caroline found that she had need of all her philosophy, natural or acquired, whether derived from Leibniz or inherent in herself, to accommodate herself to the whims and humours of her fantastic little husband. She quickly discovered the faults and foibles of his character, she was soon made aware of his meanness, his shallowness and his petty vanity, of his absurd love of boasting, his fitful and choleric temper, and his incontinence. George Augustus had inherited the bad qualities of both his parents, and the good qualities of neither, for he had not his father’s straightforwardness, nor his mother’s generous impulses. He was a contemptible character, but his wife never manifested any contempt for him; her conduct indeed was a model of all that a wife’s should be--from the man’s point of view. The little prince would rail at her, contradict her, snub her, dash his wig on the ground, strut up and down the room, red and angry, shouting at the top of his voice, but, unlike her mother-in-law, Sophie Dorothea, Caroline never answered her husband; she was always submissive, always dutiful, always the patient Griselda. The result justified her wisdom. George Augustus became genuinely attached to his wife, and she preserved his affection and kept her influence over him. Shortly after her marriage she was attacked by small-pox; it did not seriously impair her beauty, but for many days her life was in danger. Her husband was beside himself with anxiety; he never left her chamber day or night, and caught the disease from her, thus risking his life for hers. Caroline never forgot this proof of his devotion. She was shrewd enough to see from the beginning, what so many wives in equal or less exalted positions fail to see, that her interests and her husband’s interests were identical, and that as he prospered she would prosper with him, and, on the other hand, everything which hurt him or his prospects would react on her too. She realised that she could only reach worldly greatness through him, and ambition coloured all her life. The rôle of the injured wife would do her no good, either in her husband’s eyes or in those of the world, so she never played the part, though in all truth he early gave her cause enough. Her life was witness of the love she bore him, a love that was quite unaccountable. From the first moment of her married life to the last, she was absolutely devoted to him; his friends were her friends and his enemies her enemies.