That fat coxcomb she had married must be grinding his teeth in rage. They didn’t say ‘Cherish your father’, did they? Oh, it was easy to see whose side the people were on, and princes – be they prince regents and all but kings – had to consider the people.

What a letter! Laboriously she copied Brougham’s close writing.

I should continue, in silence and retirement, to lead the life which has been prescribed for me and console myself for that loss of society and those domestic comforts to which I have so long been a stranger …

She chuckled, thinking of life at Blackheath, Connaught House and the apartments in Kensington where she received her friends. Far more interesting than Carlton House and the Pavilion! Amusing people came to her parties … unshockable, witty, unconventional. But that was not the point. In this letter she was a woman complaining of her miserable and unnatural state and stressing her willingness to accept it but for one consideration: her daughter.

But, sir, there are considerations of a higher nature than any in regard to my own happiness which render this address a duty to myself and my daughter. May I venture to say – a duty also to my husband and the people committed to his care. There is a point beyond which a guiltless woman cannot with safety carry her forbearance …

She laughed. Brougham could certainly write. She imagined the Prince reading this missive. The anger, the irritation, the fury … but he would applaud the style and of course know it was not hers which was all to the good. He would know clever people were supporting her.

She went on writing. He would have to notice this. If not, she would publish it. That would be a good idea. Then there would be trouble. Wait until the people read this letter which they would think she had composed herself and which showed her so clearly as the wronged wife and the heartbroken mother.

… the separation which every succeeding month is made wider, of the mother and daughter, is equally injurious to my character and her education. I say nothing of the deep wounds which so cruel an arrangement inflicts upon my feelings, though I would fain hope that few persons will be found of a disposition to think lightly of these. To see myself cut off from one of the few domestic enjoyments left me – certainly the only one upon which I set any value, the society of my child – involves me in such misery as I well know Your Highness could never inflict on me if you were aware of its bitterness. Our intercourse has been gradually diminishing. A single interview weekly seemed sufficiently hard allowance for a mother’s affection … that, however, was reduced to our meeting once a fortnight; and I now learn that even this most rigorous interdiction is to be still more rigidly enforced …

She was enjoying this. Brougham was making her aware of emotions she had never understood. Of course, she told herself, I wanted my daughter with me. What a dear little baby she was and all my own then … for a time … a little time. Then they took her from me. I wasn’t good enough to bring up a future Queen of England even though she might be my own child.

She went on writing in the same strain, stressing her wrongs and the theme of that letter was: Consider a mother’s feelings and do not separate her from her child.

When she had finished it she sealed it and despatched it to Lords Eldon and Liverpool with the request that they should lay it before the Prince of Wales.

She laughed at the thought of his receiving it. He would pick it up as though it were infected with the smallpox, that expression of disgust on his face because he would be thinking of her.

In her bedroom she took a small figure from a drawer. She set it up against a looking-glass and laughed at it. The likeness was good – the portly figure, the well-shaped calves, the pert nose and the pouting lips. It was the Regent to the life – and exquisitely dressed of course with a necktie worn high up to his chin; the coat was of the finest velvet; even the breeches were of buckskin.

Caroline picked up a pin and thrust it into the figure where his heart would have been. The heads of several pins were visible in this spot.

‘At least,’ she said aloud, ‘it relieves the feelings. Take that, my fat prince. And that … and that …’

She laughed so much that Willie came in to see what was the matter.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘you’re playing the pin game again, Mamma.’

She picked him up and gave him loud kisses all over his face to which he submitted resignedly. He was accustomed to these outbursts of affection.

She put him down at length and threw the figure face down into a drawer.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘we shall see what His Highness has to reply to that!’

When the Prince saw the sealed letter he looked at it in much the same manner as Caroline had imagined.

‘I have sworn that I will never receive any document from the Princess of Wales,’ he reminded Eldon and Liverpool.

‘We do not forget this, Sir,’ said Liverpool, ‘but we were in duty bound to inform Your Highness of its arrival. We believe it to be Your Highness’s wish that this … missive … should be returned whence it came … unopened.’

‘This is my wish,’ replied the Prince.

‘Then,’ said Liverpool, ‘so be it, and I will inform the Princess that any communication she wishes to make must be made through the Chancellor and myself.’

The Regent nodded. ‘Let that be done, but I wish to have nothing to do with the woman.’

The ministers nodded.

It was deplorable, Lord Eldon remarked to Lord Liverpool later, that statemen like themselves should have to occupy themselves with such matters.

The Princess Caroline laughed aloud when she heard.

‘So he won’t read my letters, eh? He can’t bear to talk to me. I’m not dainty enough. Come here, Willie … do you find me dainty … or dirty?’

Willie dutifully came and was seized in a suffocating hug.

‘You love your old Mamma, eh, Willie?’

Willie declared that he did.

‘I’ve had nothing but insults from that man since I came here. Prince Regent! Prancing Tailor’s Dummy more like! And my own blessed Charlotte snatched from her mother’s arms. How would you like that?’

Willie said that what he would like was some of the special sweetmeats which were kept in her apartments.

She hugged him afresh and said he should have his sweetmeats, and she would have her darling daughter.

Brougham called.

‘My dear, faithful Brougham!’ she cried distractedly. ‘What should I do without you? What do you think that dreadful man has done now? He refuses to read my letter … our letter … and he has sent it back by way of Liverpool and Eldon. He’ll communicate only through them if you please. His Highness is afraid I might contaminate him.’

Brougham listened cautiously.

‘We will send the letter back to the noble lords,’ he said, ‘with instructions that if the Prince will not open the letter, they must do so and read its contents to him.’

‘Well, my lord?’ demanded Caroline.

Lord Eldon, the arrogant creature who always seemed to look scornfully down his nose as though to say ‘My goodness, what outsider have we brought into the royal family!’ said coldly: ‘Your Highness’s communication has been read to His Highness the Prince Regent.’

‘At last! And what did his noble Highness say?’

Eldon smiled complacently. ‘Nothing whatever, Your Highness.’

When the insolent man had gone Caroline gave vent to her fury, stamping up and down the room, abusing the royal family, her cheeks under their rouge red with emotion, her wig awry so that her own straggling grey hairs showed under the wayward black curls.

Her fury did not last long and soon she was laughing. ‘They will be sorry,’ she told Willie.

She was soon able to gloat over her revenge when on the advice of her friends, led by Brougham, the letter was sent to the Morning Chronicle and on February 10th was published prominently on the front page.

The whole country was talking about the scandalous state of affairs which existed between the Regent and his wife. What effect was it having on their daughter? the readers of the Morning Chronicle asked each other. The ponr Princess was like a shuttlecock, batted back and forth between a pair of irresponsible players. But the letter appealed to public sentiment. It was not right, was the verdict, to keep a child from its mother.

The Regent was more unpopular than ever and was greeted with boos and catcalls in the streets. His carriage, standing outside the Hertfords’ was once again pelted with refuse and spattered with mud. His standing had never been so low.

Then Brougham brought up the matter in Parliament and the letter was freely discussed.

It was, declared the Regent to the Queen, one of the most humiliating occasions of his life. ‘I wish to God I had never seen that woman. I would give anything to undo this marriage.’

The Queen, her hands folded in her lap, could not resist a self-satisfied smile which reminded him that if they had listened to her that woman would not be here now. She had wanted her son to take her niece instead of his father’s. How different if he had married Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz instead of Caroline of Brunswick.

If she did not say it now she had said it a hundred times in the past, but who knew, wondered the Regent, what marriage with Louise would have been like? It could not have been worse, he supposed, for Caroline surely must be the most unsuitable wife in the world. He despised and detested her and his greatest desire was to be rid of her. The only benefit she had brought him was to give him his heir – Charlotte – and Charlotte with her waywardness was a mixed blessing. His poor mad father had had a quiverful – too full – so that his progeny were a great expense to the nation; and he, the First Gentleman of Europe, had succeeded in producing only one – and that a girl.