Wilhelmina Charlotte Caroline was the daughter of John
Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg-Anspach - of one
of the younger lines of the Hohenzollern house - and Eleanor of Saxe-Eisenach. She was left an orphan in her
fourteenth year and passed much of her time at the Court of Berlin, where the
Elector, soon to be first 'King of Prussia', was her guardian. She was a very
pretty girl and of an intelligence and education quite beyond the ordinary
standard of German princely houses. A favourite both of the old Electress Sophia
of Hanover and of the charming Electress-Queen of Prussia, Sophia Charlotte, through
them she became the pupil and friend of the philosopher, Leibniz. The scheme
to marry her to the Catholic Archduke Charles of Austria, afterwards the Emperor
Charles VI, and her subsequent marriage in 1705 to the Protestant Electoral
Prince of Hanover, afterwards King George II of Great Britain, may have led to the
vulgar story (told of other German Princesses also) that she was brought up
without any religion so that she might be eligible for marriage to a Prince of
either Confession. It is true that, while the former party was under discussion,
Caroline "submitted to be instructed" in Catholicism by a Jesuit, but she
evidently stood up to him with some skill. Her nine years as Electoral Princess
in Hanover appear to have been happy, although it is difficult to believe that
her keen intellect can have found much pleasure in the conversation of 'dapper
George'. It is probable that, during this term of waiting, her mind was
hardening itself for the object of her ambition, namely, to become one day a
great Queen.
As Princess of Wales, from 1714 to 1727, she certainly exercised the
greatest influence over her husband and, even aggravated, though it is difficult to see
why, his quarrel with his father, instead of pacifying it. She further
exercised a very considerable influence upon English society. Kensington Palace,
Leicester House and her villa at Richmond became the centres of the political
'opposition' to St. James's Palace and the brilliant society of wits that
gathered in these places has been portrayed for us in Lord Hervey's Memoirs of
the Court of George II. The Princess had early learned to accommodate herself to
her husband's infidelity, to tolerate, and even be friendly with, his official
mistress and thereby to retain, not only his respect, but such real love as it
was in him to give. Although Caroline's conversation was coarse and she delighted in
scurrilous jests, her own morals were quite pure, but she was cynically
indifferent to those of her courtiers, which were not pure. By her indifference
to such matters, she attained, to some degree, her object, real power when her
husband became King. Before that event happened, she had marked Walpole as the
one Minister whom it would be necessary to keep. She had been in private
communication with him and, no doubt, her influence was paramount in inducing
George II to disappoint those who had been looking forward to Walpole's fall.
Not a measure of that Minister's failed from any want of her support during the remaining ten years of Caroline's
life. When the King went on his numerous
excursions to Hanover, she was left to act as Regent in Britain; and she then, at
least, enjoyed a rest from the intolerable boredom which his habits and
conversation must often have caused her. She "had an ill which nobody knew of
"
as she told her daughter in her last days. It was an internal complaint (a
rupture) which caused her the greatest agony, in spite of which she constantly
walked for hours with the fussy King in the garden, in order to maintain her
hold over him to the last. In truth, they were a strange pair. Even on her
deathbed, George treated her with a "mixture of brutality and passionate
tenderness". Of the amazing conversation between them at that parting hour,
which has been so often quoted, Lord Hervey, who records it, dryly remarks,
"I
know this episode will hardly be credited, but it is literally true."
Twenty-three years afterwards, George's last wish was that his coffin might be
placed next to Caroline's in the grave.
The Queen, then, is not wholly the gracious figure of the
garden scene in 'The Heart of Midlothian'. She hated her eldest son with a quite
unwomanly, not to say unnatural, passion and refused to allow him to come near
her at the end. Her influence on the moral tone of Court and Society must have
been more for evil than for good. She tolerated the abominable backbiter, Hoadly,
and gave him bishoprics. Yet, in other instances, she was an excellent dispenser
of Church patronage: Butler, Berkeley and Sherlock received every possible
encouragement from her. Nor was it only in Whig circles that she could discern
merit. She did much to soften the hard lot of the non-jurors, of the Catholics
and even of the Scottish Episcopalian remnant. She had real interest in
literature and was a most intelligent patroness of men of letters. It must have
been a great drawback to a woman of her taste for conversation that she was such
an exceedingly bad linguist. English, she never really mastered at all and
French, she spoke and wrote "after the schole of Herrenhausen-atte-Hannover".
