The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1903-02-20
AN UNTIDY PRINCESS.
Caroline, Afterward the Queen Of
George Nv. of England, Was Slow
emily in the Extreme.

To be delicately clean in clothes
and person is as much a matter of
course to-day as is the habit of wear.
ing garments or shaking hands. That
it was not always SO. says London
Modern Society, we were reminded a
day or two since when perusing a
letter of the first earl of Malmes-
bury, written when that astute dip
lomatist was sent to escort the Prin-
cess Caroline of Brunswick to Eng
land to be the bride of the prince
of Wales, afterward George Nv. The,
way was long in those days, and
hostile armies lay between Bruins
wick and England. The princess,
with her mother, the duchess (sister
to King George III.), and escorted by
lord Malmesbury and large retinue,
set out on December 80. 1t was
April before she was safely landed
ON British soil! Poor Lord Malmcs-
bury did his best with his eccentric
charge, and used the time in trying
to fit the ill-educated, unregulated
girl, who even then took rank as the
princess of Wales, for the perilous
position into which she was to be
thrust. 81
He was distressed to find that
Princess Caroline boosted that she
could jump out of bed and appear en-
grande toilette in the course of ID
minutes. Remembering what toilet
meant in the days of hoops and pow
der, this seemed to him only about
time enough to get dairymaid ready
for filling the milking pail. He writes
to his confidential friend, the then
duke of Portland, in pathetic dis
may:
81 have had two conversations with
Princess Caroline on cleanliness and
on delicacy of speaking. On these
points I endeavored, as far as was
possible for a man, to inculcate the
necessity of great and nice attention
to every part of dress-as well as to
what was hid as to what was to be
seen. 1 know she wears coarse petit
coats and coarse linen and thick
stockings these never well
washed nor changed often enough!
] gave her credit for her boast of n
short toilet. What 1 could not say
further on this point 1 got said
through women, through Nine
Busche and afterwards through Mrs.
Harcourt. 1t is remarkable how
amazingly her education has been
neglected on this point, and how
much her mother, although an Eng
lish woman, was inattentive to it."
The earl was little bit mistaken
Brunswick, although the sister of
King George Ill, was as utterly Ger
man in training and in ideas as she
could possibly be. She inherited all
the regrettable qualities of the first
two Hanover kings, and she early
married one of the most despicablc
of the petty potentates that swarmed
in Germany under the somber shadow
of Frederick the Great.
1t appears as if no woman ever
born could have been fitted to be the
wife of the profiigate prince-it
would have needed the nature of an
angel and the patience of thousand
Jobs to have put up with him as q
husband. But in all Europe there
could not have been creature less
suited to reform Carlton house than
Princess Caroline. 1t is on record
that her father wished a certain
Nine. Rosenzweit to accompany her
to England as her reader" and
when the request was refused the
duke took Lord Malmesbury aside
and explained that the lady was quite
Insignificant and unimportant, but
that he much wished her to accom-
pany the princess, for Caroline
writes i'll, and spells ill, so is accus-
toned to trust to Nine. Rosenzweit
on all occasions" And this at time
when letter writing was a fine art,
and the most flippant person prided
himself on the turning of neat
phrases and the graceful expression
of pretty conceits.
The earl sums up the character of
the unfortunate Caroline in these
words:
"She has quick parts, without dis
tinguishing understanding; ready
conception, but no judgment; caught
by the first impression, led by the
first impulse. Talkative, prone to
confide in missish friendships that
last "a hours. Some natural moral
ity, but no strong notions of lis
value nor of it's necessity. Without
a grain of dignity or an idea of de-
corum."
Was it much wonder that poor
Caroline wrecked herself, and that
she and her precious husband betwixt
them nearly wrecked the English
monarchy?