AN ORIGINAL LETTER

ADDRESSED

By the late PRINCESS CHARLOTTE

TO HER MOTHER,
The Princess of Wales, now Queen of England.

In October, 1817.

MY DEAREST MOTHER,

A very few days will elapse before I may claim to be addressed by the endearing appellation with which I have commenced this letter; when Providence may develop to me new duties which may in some measure temper, but can never supersede, those moral and pious obligations which have been heretofore imposed upon me. Were I to disguise my true sentiments, or to affect feelings other than those which occupy my bosom in the prospect of becoming a mother, I should feel myself unworthy of that parental affection which constitutes at least the second bliss of life.

United to a man whose whole attentions are directed to the promotion of my happiness, I cannot but feel a pleasure in the anticipation of that hour of perilous hope which shall enable me to present him a new tie of connubial love, and to the nation a new and abundant source of future promise and consolation. Political considerations, in this instance, stand in competition with the more near and natural feelings of the heart. While, as a wife, I am alive to all those anxious susceptibilities which accompany my peculiar situation, I am compelled by circumstances to extend my views to contemnances widely different in their kind as in their latitude; contemnances involving the nearest and most durable interests of a people to whom I owe a debt scarcely to be liquidated,—gratitude for unbounded affection.

To relieve in some degree, this weight of obligation, and to justify the universal confidence in the strength and consistency of my character, I have determined, should it please Providence to bless me with offspring, so to regulate its early reason and to direct its infant energies, that the lessons I have received from you, and the wisdom which time and observation have confirmed, may be handed down to my child with a view to the perpetuation of the great principle, that the legitimate end of all governments is the welfare of society, and that political and private virtue is the surest foundation and the best bulwark of a throne.

But O, my Mother! when my timid imagination revolves upon the uncertainty which veils futurity,—when I look to the dark possibilities which may put a period to the dreams of hope, even shadows shake my courage, and I feel myself the victim of terrors which reason would almost demonstrate absurd. At such a trying moment, why am I debarred from the consoling voice of maternal affection? Why is not my Mother allowed to pour cheerfulness into the sinking soul of her inexperienced and trembling child? I have no friend, no relation near me, whose advice may guide, or whose admonitions may check my conduct. Surrounded by strangers, with a single exception, my heart feels itself alone; and should the protection of Heaven for a moment leave me, and I fall, the presence of a Mother would surely impart a serenity and resignation to my mind, which would smoothe the pillow for my dying head, and prevent my distracted soul from erring, in the hour of her severest trial.

Secluded from the giddy world, I have learned to set a true value on that retirement, which has taught me a more perfect knowledge, not only of myself, but of the society over which I may one day be called to rule. Folly and pride no longer wear to me the imposing blazonry which they exhibited to me in early years. I have read, reflected, and conversed; and I trust the evidence of a future day, will rescue me from the imputation of having read, reflected, and conversed in vain.

The sufferings of my early years, acute as they were in their operation, have not been unproductive of instruction. Their effect has been to correct that sanguineness of disposition which was too common a source of severe disappointment, and which uniformly led me to view things through a prejudiced

medium: a sort of premature experience has given me that insight into human life and human character which in ordinary cases and circumstances is the result of the study and observation of years.

Your virtues, my dearest Mother, and your afflictions, added strength to the affections which nature had entwined about my heart, and urged me to cling to you, in all changes, and under all shades of persecution, with a constancy which those who hated you termed obstinacy, but which those who loved you elevated by the name of honorable perseverance. I felt that I was not merely acquiescing in the first of my moral duties.

In proportion, however, as I have loved you, do I now feel the bitterness of your absence. Ye have no substitute in this heart: there is none to occupy your place to my seeking eyes. Even the affectionate attentions of an amiable consort are insufficient to supply the chasm in my bosom, but leave it unsatisfied. I have illustrious relatives, it is true, but they offer me no kindness; and if they did, there are certain slumbering recollections which would awake in my brain, and check my ardour to receive them. I have but one Mother, and no variations of place or contemnances can remove her from my sight. Heaven impressed her image on my soul, and time has established it there as its native and legitimate sphere.

By a refinement of cruelty, indeed, we may be separate on earth: and I, as well as yourself, may be doomed the victim of an unjust and malignant spirit of persecution. But in a better world our congenial spirits will rush to meet each other, where no envious or hating fiends can intervene, or impede the pleasures which flow from the pure fountain of filial and maternal love.

Such sentiments as these naturally arise out of the contemplation of my situation at this moment. Should it be the pleasure of Providence that I survive the hour of approaching danger, I may at some future period be endowed with power to restore you to that situation which you were formed to embellish; but if an all-wise decree should summon me from this sphere of anxious apprehension, not for myself, but for my Mother, a pang of terror shoots across myestrled brain; even then, however, my last prayer to Heaven would be to gift you with that sublime feeling of pious resignation which would teach you to bow submissive to the chastening stroke of our common Father, and to console your afflicted heart with the anticipation of our re-union in a world, where felicity is unimpaired, and to which malice is inadmissible.

Believe me, my adored Mother, I fear less to die than to live. The prospect of protracted existence is so blended with dangers and difficulties, so shadowed with clouds and uncertainties, so replete with anxieties and apprehensions, that I must shrink from the contemplation of it, and fly for refuge even to the probability of my removal from so joyless an inheritance. The page of history has determined that happiness is not the possession of those who move in the lofty circles, to which my birth entitles me to look. I cannot hope for an exception in my favour. All the joys of life are centered in my present retirement; and they are even poor, because you are not a participator in them. But even this unqualified enjoyment of them must be brief; and I must emerge into a situation uncongenial to my soul, and destructive to all hopes of felicity on earth. What cause then have I to shun that issue which others may behold with horror? What cause then have I to covet that existence which others so highly prize? Death would obliterote no image of delight from my heart, save that which, in the portrait of a beloved mother, nature has still left to the hoping, doubting, yet fearing

CHARLOTTE.

Claremont, October 10, 1817.

Oakley, Printer, Blandford.