Fitzherbert, Maria Anne, 1756-1837; George IV, King of Great Britain, 1762-1830
'Her first separation from the Prince was preceded by no quarrel, or
even coolness, and came upon her quite unexpectedly. She received,
when sitting down to dinner at the table of William the Fourth, then
Duke of Clarence, the first intimation of the loss of her ascendancy
over the affections of the Prince; having, only the preceding day,
received a note from his Royal Highness, written in his usual strain
of friendship, and speaking of their appointed engagement to dine at
the house of the Duke of Clarence. The Prince's letter was written from
Brighton, where he had met Lady Jersey. From that time she never saw
the Prince, and this interruption of their intimacy was followed by
his marriage with Queen Caroline; brought about, as Mrs. Fitzherbert
conceived, under the twofold influence of the pressure of his debts
on the mind of the Prince, and a wish on the part of Lady Jersey to
enlarge the Royal Establishment, in which she was to have an important
situation.
'Upon her speaking to me of this union (confiding in her own desire
that I should disguise from her nothing that I might conceive to be
of doubtful character as affecting her conduct to the Prince), I told
her I had been informed that some proposals had been made to her
immediately preceding the marriage of the Prince, of which her uncle,
Mr. Errington, had been the channel, offering some terms upon which his
Royal Highness was disposed to give up the match. She told me there
was no truth whatever in the report; that a day or two preceding the
marriage, he had been seen passing rapidly on horseback before her
house at Marble Hill, but that his motive for doing so, was unknown to
her; and that, afterwards, when they were reconciled, she cautiously
abstained from alluding to such topics; as the greatest interruptions
to their happiness, at that period, were his bitter and passionate
regrets and self accusations for his conduct, which she always met by
saying--"We must look to the present and the future, and not think of
the past."
'I ventured, also, to mention another report, that George the Third,
the day before the marriage, had offered to take upon himself the
responsibility of breaking off the match with the Princess of
Brunswick, should the Prince desire it. Of this, too, she told me, she
knew nothing; but added, that it was not improbable, for the King was
a good and religious man. She owned, that she was deeply distressed
and depressed in spirits at this formal abandonment, with all its
consequences, as it affected her reputation in the eyes of the world.
[Illustration: THE RAGE.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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