PRINCESSES: The Daughters of George III
By Flora Fraser
John Murray, £25; 400pp
ISBN 0 7195 6108 6
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To his sister Marie Antoinette, the Emperor Joseph II of Austria once wrote: “You meddle in a great many matters which you know nothing about.” For the French Queen’s near contemporaries, the daughters of George III, whose lives spanned almost a century, from the middle of the 18th to the middle of the 19th centuries, there would be no opportunities for meddling in matters of importance.
Of the six princesses apostrophised by Fanny Burney as more lovely than any sister princesses “in tale or fable”, three were to marry, forming in middle age unions without dynastic significance. No children resulted from these marriages and between them Charlotte, Augusta, Elizabeth, Mary, Sophia and Amelia gave birth to a single grandchild for their doting father and exacting mother — a son born to Princess Sophia outside wedlock, illegitimate and consequently unacknowledged.
Flora Fraser does not claim for her subjects unjustified neglect, though neglected they have been by history. In the arena of 18th-century royalty, princesses served limited purposes: to become a ruler, marry a ruler or give birth to a ruler. In largely failing on all three counts, the daughters of George III are, by the measure of their own time, women of little significance. This does not, of course, mean that their lives are without interest or that they were not remarkable, talented or admirable women.
George III adored his daughters. Congratulating her brother, the future George IV, on the birth of his own daughter Charlotte, Princess Mary wrote, “Papa is so delighted it is a daughter. As you know, he loves little girls best.” So much so that he wished never to part with them. As late as 1805, the King wrote cautioning one would-be suitor: “I cannot deny that I have never wished to see any of them marry: I am happy in their company and do not in the least want a separation.” The result, for all six princesses, was a happy childhood succeeded by frustrating years of waiting and hoping, followed either by belated marriage or a descent into aunthood (George III also had nine sons). Love for one another and the family’s closeness mitigated the dreariness of lives without independence and, mostly, incident, “the history of one day that of every day”. The princesses returned the adoration of the “most perfect and angelic papa” and, though Elizabeth would later write of family relationships, “one must often smile upon what would at times make me cry”, Fraser’s account contains few examples of bitterness or protest.
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Filially devoted, the princesses nevertheless found ways of taking the law into their own hands: Augusta, Sophia and Amelia all enjoyed illicit relationships of which their father would certainly have disapproved. Sophia gave birth to a child by an army officer, Thomas Garth, “a hideous old devil”, short in stature with a birthmark over one eye; while the death of Princess Amelia aged 27 may first have been set in motion by venereal infection.
In the course of her research, Flora Fraser developed for all six princesses “the greatest respect and admiration”. One of the achievements of Princesses is to inspire in the reader similar emotions.
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Matthew Dennison’s biography of Princess Beatrice (1857- 1944) will be published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 2006