The Wedding of Princess Charlotte
Despite sneers and some natural forebodings, writes Joanna Richardson, this brief alliance proved extremely happy.
Early in 1816, Lady Charlotte Campbell paid a social call on a duchess in Rome, and collected “a good deal of English news.” The news, of course, was gossip, and the gossip, naturally, was gossip about royalty: “Princess Charlotte’s approaching marriage to Prince Leopold was canvassed” over the coffee and the ices, “and no one seemed to approve; yet, as Mr. N—observed, ‘who else is there who could be chosen for the bride groom’?”
The tone of surprise and disapproval was echoed even in England, where Dorothea de Lieven, the wife of the Russian Ambassador, wrote incredulously to her brother: “It seems that the marriage of the Princess Charlotte with Leopold of Coburg is really to take place.”
Mme. de Lieven wrote on February 1st, and, almost as she sanded her spluttering message, Charlotte was writing triumphantly to Mercer Elphinstone1 that she would be married at Carlton House, and Leopold of Coburg was on the way from Berlin.
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