The Third George: (Georgian Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

happen.
    The Grand Duchess’s attendants went to her room to rouse her one morning and found her unwell. Before the day was out she was dead.
    This was bewildering.
    Events were happening too fast. Christina had been plunged from the heights of delight to the lowest despair; Charlotte was to leave home and go to a strange husband; and this had all taken place in a few weeks after years of monotonous existence. And now change had come from an unexpected quarter. The mother who had governed their lives was dead, and there could be no talk of weddings for a while.
    Charlotte, standing by her mother’s coffin, looking down into that autocratic face, now so white and still and oddly enough younger than Charlotte had ever known her, was suddenly overcome by a fear of the future. Life was ironic, mocking almost. Here you are fussing about weddings, so I will give you a funeral.
    How can we know from one moment to another, thought Charlotte, what will become of any of us? One must be strong; one must be prepared.
    Throughout the schloss they were saying: ‘This will delay the wedding. The Princess Charlotte cannot think of marriage so soon after her mother’s death.’
    New hope was springing up in Christina’s eyes. Delay meant hope. Often that which was postponed never took place at all.

The Royal Family
    THE KING OF England was perplexed. It was less than a year ago when his grandfather, George II, had arisen as usual, taken his dish of chocolate, asked, as he did every morning, which way the wind was blowing, announced his intention of taking a walk in Kensington Gardens, gone into his closet in his dressing room and fallen dead. The old king had been in his seventy-seventh year so his death was not unexpected; all the same George, his grandson, had found the mantle of kingship oppressive.
    The shock had not been so great as that he had suffered nine years before at the death of his father. That had been unexpected. Frederick Prince of Wales had seemed a normal healthy man until a blow from a tennis ball had triggered off a series of illnesses and at the age of forty-five he had died leaving his widow, the Princess Augusta, pregnant and already the mother of a large family to support her claims to importance in the country and to make her a formidable figure in the eyes of her father-in-law, King George II. She was the mother of this George who had become Prince of Wales on his father’s death – her dear George, her meek and malleable George through whom she intended togovern England, although at this time none was aware of the fact. Then there were Edward Duke of York, William Duke of Gloucester, Henry Duke of Cumberland and young Frederick William. She also had daughters – Augusta who was the eldest of the family and a year George’s senior, and Elizabeth, poor deformed clever Elizabeth, who had died when George was Prince of Wales; and lastly there was Caroline Matilda, Frederick’s posthumous child who was born four months after his death. But it was her eldest, George, who commanded her attention, for he was the King and on him rested her power.
    But all the intricacies of state affairs had been overshadowed in George’s mind by thoughts of marriage; for he was betrothed to the Princess Charlotte Sophia of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and he was in love with the Lady Sarah Lennox. As he confided to Lord Bute, that man whom he regarded as his closest friend and who was more than a friend to his mother, George ‘boiled for Sarah Lennox’. All day he thought of Sarah; and Sarah was angry with him, which he would be the first to admit was reasonable, Had he not openly shown his feelings for her; he had even proposed – obliquely it was true through innuendoes to her cousin and friend the Lady Susan Fox-Strangeways. And everyone had believed that he intended to put up a fight at least. There might not have been great opposition. He would have had Henry Fox, Sarah’s brother-in-law, on his side and, apart from William