Sir Henry Halford, however, who was the person always employed at that time, settled the business of putting off the dinner party, by coming to say from the Queen, that as the Princess Charlotte was not well enough to go back to Windsor, she could not be well enough to see company at dinner, and the Duchess of York prudently declined it. The Prince Regent was supposed not to know anything of this affair, and perhaps really did not. I feel almost ashamed of spending ink and paper on such trifles, but they show the style of treatment adopted towards the future Queen of England.
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THE LETTER IN THE “MORNING CHRONICLE”—THE PRINCE AND PRINCESS OF WALES—PAINFUL POSITION OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE—FATHER AND DAUGHTER—THE PRINCESS IN RETIREMENT—THE DELICATE INVESTIGATION—BEHAVIOUR OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE.
A VERY few days after this first fête, at which Princess Charlotte made her appearance, the _Morning Chronicle_ exhibited a letter[132] from the Princess of Wales to the Regent, complaining of her daughter not being allowed to join in society, to acquire knowledge of the world, &c. Another complaint was her not being permitted to see her oftener; and the most serious one, that she was not _confirmed_. This letter had been sent to the Prince a month before, and a copy of it to Lord Liverpool. That to the Prince had been returned unopened, and had it rested there it would have been very well, but it was injudicious to print it in the papers, and more particularly at a time when Princess Charlotte had just appeared in public, and had been allowed to visit her mother twice in the space of eleven days, instead of once a fortnight, which had been the rule for some time past. I have no doubt that these two last visits had been so contrived on account of the letter; but _that_ the world could not know, and with many people it put the Princess of Wales in the wrong. It produced a visit to me from Colonel Mac Mahon, with a command from the Prince to write a note to the lady in waiting of the Princess of Wales, to say that, “in the absence of the Duchess of Leeds, I was commanded to inform her that Princess Charlotte could not dine at Kensington that day, as had been intended.”[133]