Catherine had been propelled into a dazzling world filled with glamour, gaiety and decadence, but she made her debut into fashionable society at a time of major political upheaval in England. George III had been suffering from a long, cruel illness and when he finally relapsed into madness, Parliament reluctantly passed the Regency Bill decreeing that the king’s eldest son, George, should assume power. The bill came into effect on 11 February 1811, heralding the start of the Regency, one of the most formative and exciting periods in English history.
The newly appointed Prince Regent was a notorious spend-thrift, renowned for ostentation, gambling and keeping mistresses. Many within the aristocracy followed his lead, spending lavishly on fashion and entertainment. From the outset, the Prince Regent set the moral tone for the era with his Grand Summer Fete at Carlton House on 19 June 1811. There could be no official coronation while George III was alive, so invitations ostensibly suggested that the fete was in honour of the French royal family, who were living in exile in England having been deposed by Napoleon. In reality, the prince simply wanted to host a spectacular celebration to inaugurate his appointment as Prince Regent.
More than 2,000 invitations were sent, and the fashionable world was in rapture as everyone prepared for the royal extravaganza. Pawnbrokers lent out diamonds for the night at eleven per cent interest,1 while seamstresses worked round the clock to ensure that the queen bees of society would be suitably attired. Elaborate court dress was required: lavishly decorative, complete with trains and headdresses. Catherine chose an elegant gown of white satin, richly appliquéd and trimmed with silver, topped with a headdress of pearls and feathers.2
On the day of the fete, Catherine and her sisters set off for the palace in good time. Guests were invited for nine o’clock, but by eight the approach to Carlton House was jammed with equipages that formed a solid block all the way back to the top of St James’s Street. Liveried footmen regulated the traffic, permitting six carriages onto the courtyard at one time. Catherine watched with anticipation as wave after wave of the beau monde alighted, dressed in their finest clothes and jewellery. Ladies wore mainly white gowns of satins, silks or lace ornamented with silver. Gentlemen appeared in formal court dress or military and naval uniforms.
Nerves and excitement consumed Catherine as she entered the Grand Grecian Hall and joined the line of guests waiting to be presented to the host. The Prince Regent liked to create an air of fantasy, so the hall was hung with billowing drapery to give the illusion of a Bedouin tent, complete with exotic ornamental shrubs. Catherine and her party had plenty of time to admire their surroundings as they shuffled past a row of Yeomen of the Guard, all standing to attention. As she approached the top of the queue, dainty Catherine glimpsed the forty-eight-year-old Prince Regent looking suitably resplendent in a field marshal’s red coat, well-corseted to contain his bulk and sparkling with extra gold braids and buttons. When she finally stood before the imposing figure of His Royal Highness, Catherine was completely awestruck as she dropped into a graceful curtsey.
Formalities completed, Catherine was escorted outside where the fantasy continued. She stood spellbound, gazing around the gardens that were illuminated by thousands of variegated lights.3 It was like a vision of heaven, creating an illusion that guests were floating among the stars. Trellises had been erected to form supper galleries, with tables and chairs brought in to seat 2,000. Festooned with flowers, the galleries had large mirrors in place of walls, reflecting lights that ‘gleamed like stars through the foliage’.4 Fine wine flowed as hundreds of footmen, dressed in smart blue and gold livery, weaved among tables replenishing glasses. As Catherine sat sipping champagne, she felt intoxicated by the heady sensations of the evening: the sweet scent of roses and geraniums, the melodious strains of a band wafting from a distant corner, and the profusion of flickering lights casting a glow of enchantment over the proceedings.
As the buzz of conversation grew increasingly raucous, Catherine began to relax and enjoy herself. Dinner was served on 2,000 matching silver plates; there were hot and cold soups, and a variety of roast meats, followed by exotic fresh fruits such as peaches, pineapples and grapes lovingly cultivated in hothouses. Dancing in the gardens began after supper, in four huge marquees pitched on the lawns. Bands of Guards, in full state uniform, performed throughout the night. Danced off her feet by a relentless stream of admirers, Catherine did not leave the party until dawn. The Prince Regent was a legendary host, but the fete was an exceptionally extravagant affair even by his standards. It was typical of him to spend so recklessly when he was already deeply in debt – the fete cost an enormous £120,000 (around twelve million pounds today).5 Divided between 2,000 guests, the price worked out at £60 a head, an obscene amount of money, particularly when considering that most families in England survived on just £50 a year.
In late Georgian England, the gulf between rich and poor was vast. While the aristocracy and the gentry enjoyed all the comforts that money could buy, the majority of the population was on the brink of starvation.6 The Prince Regent was in a position to exert his considerable political influence to help the underprivileged. Instead, his Regency remained a time of biting poverty and hardship for around seventy-five per cent of the population.7 The working classes were severely malnourished, lived in squalor and suffered real want. Desperate with hunger, men resorted to stealing to feed their children despite the fact that the penalty was usually death by hanging. The law had no compassion and numerous people were sent to the gallows for petty theft, leaving behind helpless young families to fend for themselves as best they could.
Social commentators did not have much of a forum for debate due to government censorship of the press. At the start of the French Revolution, newspaper criticism of the British Establishment was seen as a potent threat to the status quo. During what became known as his ‘winter of terror’, Prime Minister William Pitt suspended Habeas Corpus (1794) and passed the Treason and Sedition Act (1795). From the 1790s until the 1820s, the government used censorship and imprisonment to silence its critics. Even as late as 1849, the investigative journalist Henry Mayhew faced litigation after writing a series of articles for the Morning Chronicle, outlining the gruesome living conditions in London’s slums. In one article he described how people were forced to drink and bathe in murky river water contaminated by cesspools, slaughterhouses and noxious waste from factories. Mayhew recorded:
The sun shone upon a narrow strip of water . . . we gazed in horror, we saw drains and sewers emptying their filthy contents into it . . . In this wretched place we were taken to a house where an infant lay dead of cholera. We asked if they really did drink the water? The answer was, “they were obliged to”.8
In his voluminous survey, Mayhew encountered endless scenes of abject poverty and suffering among the labouring poor of London. He lamented, ‘I could not have believed that there were human beings toiling so long and gaining so little, and starving so silently and heroically.’9
London was a city divided. To the west stood an elegant enclave of Georgian squares and spacious town houses to accommodate the well-fed middle classes. In stark contrast, the east was overrun with warrens of unsanitary slums, housing starving people blunted to feelings of ordinary misery.
Caricature was hugely influential during the Regency because illustrations were more ambivalent than text, making them difficult to repress. Political caricaturists James Gillray (1757–1815) and George Cruikshank (1792–1878) were among those who high-lighted the struggles of the working class, using satire as a powerful rhetorical tool to expose the grave social and moral issues of the time.10 The Prince Regent was a favourite target because he was considered to epitomize the excesses that blighted the era.
Print-shop windows provided Londoners with a colourful, theatrical, urban space, a place of shared laughter for all classes in society.11 City workers routinely stopped to view the gratis exhibitions; doctors, lawyers, rat-catchers and chimney sweeps all crowded round, eager to discover the latest antics of their Regent and others in the public eye. Unsurprisingly, the Regency fete provided ample ammunition to lambast the prince for his extravagance. In Merry Making on the Regent’s Birthday,12 Cruikshank showed him flirting with his bosomy mistress while two men in the background hang from the scaffold at Newgate. Pitiful wives and orphans stand outside begging for a pardon, but His Royal Highness is too busy enjoying himself to worry; in fact, he is so unconcerned, his dancing foot crushes the petition for mercy. Packed with detail, when this caricature appeared in print-shop windows the message was clear to everyone, including the illiterate.
At the start of the Regency, most among the privileged classes did little to alleviate the devastating poverty. Dripping with jewels, guests at the fete made no apology for their good fortune. Despite her philanthropic upbringing, there can be little doubt that Catherine thoroughly enjoyed the dazzling entertainment at Carlton House that evening, without stopping to dwell on the state of the nation. It would be hard not to. Surrounded by an unrelenting throng of admirers, her immediate concern was to find a husband and on that magical night at Carlton House a worthy competitor entered the fray. The Duke of Clarence, younger brother of the Prince Regent, was enthralled by her and the advantages she presented. Gushing with compliments, Clarence noted that Catherine was ‘lovely, beautiful and bewitching’.13 Staying close by her side, he paid such marked attention that it was clear he intended to deliver a proposal of marriage.
At the time the Duke of Clarence was fourth in line to the throne; Catherine was aware that if she married him, her children would be royalty, potentially even the future king or queen of England.