The private agony of royal daughters

Reading history, declares Jane Austen’s Catherine Moreland in “Northanger Abbey,” “tells me nothing that does not vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all.” Austen certainly thought that Prince George, who as prince regent became Britain’s de facto king in 1811, proved that point about the good-for-nothing men. Moreland might have developed a better opinion of history, however, if she could have read “Princesses,” Flora Fraser’s new book about the prince’s six sisters.

In 1788, Charlotte, the Princess Royal, wrote to younger brother Prince Augustus, about the illness of “our dear papa,” King George III. “His complaint has been very disagreeable and indeed alarming for the time that it lasted -- the spasm beginning at three in the morning, and continuing until eight o’clock in the evening. He is, thank God, perfectly recovered.... “ In fact, the king’s “bilious attack” was the first sign of his “madness” -- now understood to have been porphyria, a hereditary metabolic disorder in whose grip he would rave distractedly, the veins in his face popping and his eyes resembling “black-currant jelly,” according to his distraught queen. In his delusions, he would make lewd advances toward women, his own daughters included. (The king emerged from this first bout of illness after four months, but it would recur and ultimately bring his reign to a premature end.) Those most intimately affected by the king’s disintegration were his wife and daughters.

Before disaster struck, King George and Queen Charlotte preferred a quiet family life with their 13 surviving children (two sons died young) to the pomp and display of the court. Though his relationships with some of his sons, particularly Prince George, would grow strained, George doted on his daughters, and they returned his love. But the secluded domestic tranquillity to which he tenderly sentenced these girls stifled them.

While their brothers were sent abroad to attend school or serve in the military, the princesses remained at home. The fond king hated the thought of his beloved daughters marrying and leaving England. While Britain and Europe were thrown into upheaval by the American Revolution, the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, the princesses spent most of their time isolated in one or another royal residence, doing elegant needlework, painting fans and netting silk purses. They also kept up a voluminous correspondence with family and friends -- it was their gossip lifeline to the larger world. But as their father descended into dementia, their devastated mother grew capricious and violent-tempered and their brothers jockeyed for power, the princesses’ letters also spoke of their painful struggles and endurance.

Fraser, who has mined the Royal Archives to make full and revealing use of this private correspondence, establishes each princess’ individual character through her own words: aloof, regal Charlotte; loyal, loving Augusta; artistic and eccentric Elizabeth; fashionable beauty Mary; avid reader and strategic invalid Sophia; and passionate, rebellious Amelia. Each princess in her own way chafed at enforced spinsterhood and a lack of autonomy. Eventually, three did escape into marriage: Charlotte, the first to wed, married the Hereditary Prince of Wurttemberg, a man so large he had “a piece cut out of a whist table at home to accommodate his stomach,” who would abuse her; Mary resigned herself to marriage with her tiresome cousin, the Duke of Gloucester, but saved her heart for her eldest brother, the Prince Regent; and Elizabeth had to wait until she was 48 to marry a German prince she called “Bluff” and end a spinster’s life of drawing, teapot collecting and amateur farming.

The other three princesses remained unmarried, though not necessarily celibate: Amelia’s unfulfilled dream of a postnuptial “week in bed” with her beloved Gen. Charles Fitzroy was probably inspired by experience; Sophia destroyed her prospects by bearing an illegitimate child, probably by one of the king’s equerries, though a persistent rumor identified the father as her predatory brother Ernest, Duke of Cumberland; and Augusta at least contemplated a secret marriage with her lover, Sir Brent Spencer. Anyone fascinated by the antics of today’s royal family may notice a certain resemblance to the princesses, but the strongest sensation produced by these female lives is claustrophobia.

Fraser, author of two well-received biographies of female contemporaries of the daughters of George III (one, “The Unruly Queen,” concerns their brilliantly scandalous sister-in-law, Caroline), has woven a dense, highly colored tapestry of the sisters’ individual yet intertwined lives. It is a remarkably intimate picture, because she deftly keeps the princesses’ letters at the center of her story, allowing their distinctive voices to speak. The inevitable trade-off: Certain context, such as the description of place, is subordinated, and ordinary folk are all but invisible.

Vivid moments and images linger: the girls parading in their best dresses for the townspeople on the terrace of Windsor Castle; Charlotte longingly beseeching her brother Augustus to describe what he sees in Rome; Amelia bravely facing her agonizing death from tuberculosis at age 27; the haggard King George III, in nightgown and nightcap, agitatedly beckoning to his daughters from behind a window; a shared family interest in kangaroos; the sweet, childish letters written to the elderly princesses by their niece Victoria, who would become queen. “Princesses” opens an invaluable new window into the often troubled private world of these royal women. *