This marriage was doomed from the start.
When the prince who would later become George IV and Caroline of Brunswick first met (just three days before their wedding in 1795), they were both disgusted. George immediately left and asked his servant for a glass of brandy.1 As soon as he was gone, Caroline exclaimed (in French) “I think he’s very fat and he’s nothing like as handsome as his portrait!”2 They only had sex three times during their twenty-six years of marriage - twice on their wedding night and once the day after.3
George and Caroline formally separated in 1797, though they remained married.4 Both had affairs, and in 1806 Caroline’s former friend Lady Douglas spread the rumour that Caroline had an illegitimate child with Sir Sidney Smith.5 The “Delicate Investigation” into this accusation acquitted the princess of all charges, but the rumours persisted. In 1814, Caroline left England to travel on the continent.
Shortly after her arrival in Italy, she began a rather public affair with Bartolomeo Pergami, an Italian soldier sixteen years her junior, whom she had engaged as her courier.6 After the death of their only daughter in 1817, George decided that he would do everything in his power to divorce his wife or to at least prevent her from becoming Queen once he eventually acceeded to the throne.7 To gather evidence on Caroline’s affair with Pergami, the so-called Milan Commission was set up, which soon started to track down witnesses and to record their testimonies. Caroline was willing to agree to a divorce under the condition that she would receive a large settlement and would be able to continue to live in Italy with Pergami.8 The law, however, forbade divorces by consent - the only way George and Caroline’s marriage could be dissolved was if she admitted her adultery.9 This was out of the question for the princess. The government under PM Lord Liverpool was not too keen on opening an investigation against Caroline either, provided she remained abroad and held no higher title than that of Princess of Wales.10
The situation escalated when George III died on 29 January 1820 and the Prince of Wales (having been Prince Regent from 1811 onwards, due to his father’s insanity) became George IV. Caroline, now Queen Consort, was infinitely more popular with the people than her husband.11 Her support was especially high among the Radicals - reform-oriented politicans who were to the left of the liberal Whig party -, and even republicans rallied to ‘the Queen’s Cause’.12 What is more, despite Caroline being far from beloved by the upper classes, even those who were convinced of her adultery agreed that if she was bad, the King was worse.13 In the public imagination, Caroline became an anti-establishment icon.
Still abroad, the Queen Consort weighed her options. Many of the French, Italian, and even English aristrocrats she met did not treat her with the deference that her new station required, most likely expecting her to be stripped of her title soon.14 Her spies informed Caroline that her popularity at home was ever growing. Meanwhile, the new King was searching for a way to exclude her name from the liturgy and still tried to persuade the obstinate government to accuse Caroline of adultery and to grant him a divorce. He eventually achieved the former, much to the dismay of the people.15 With regard to the latter, however, Lord Liverpool’s government remained firm.
Months went by. Caroline was offered 50.000 pounds per year if she agreed never to set foot on English soil again and to renounce the title of Queen Consort.16 The government who had proposed this solution knew just as well as Caroline herself that these terms were unacceptable. As expected, she refused.
On 5 June 1820, Caroline finally arrived in Dover, where she was greeted by a crowd of supporters. Just one day later, George IV sent a green bag to the House of Lords and another one (with identical contents) to the House of Commons. These bags contained the evidence collected by the Milan Commission and, the King hoped, would prove his wife's adultery once and for all.17 After considerable deliberation, the government agreed to set up a secret committee to study the evidence. On 4 July, this committee declared that the content of the green bags was damning. The next day, the “Pains and Penalties Bill” (or, more precisely, the Bill "to deprive Her Majesty Queen Caroline Amelia Elizabeth of the Title, Prerogatives, Rights, Privileges, and Exemptions of Queen Consort of this Realm; and to dissolve the Marriage between His Majesty and the said Caroline Amelia Elizabeth") was introduced to Parliament.18 The Queen Consort would be tried for adultery.
For the most part, the evidence presented for Caroline and Pergami's affair was rather tame - having adjoining bedrooms, spending time with no one else present, exchanging paintings of one another, Caroline promoting her courier to chamberlain. Nothing overly salacious, though the questioning of witnesses did not shrink away from the dirty details, as evinced by this exchange:
What sort of stains were they that you saw?
As much as I have seen they were white.
Are you married?
Yes.
Here the witness became agitated and cried. A glass of water was brought, and some minutes' pause took place until she recovered herself.
Ask her what the stains appeared to be?
I did not inspect them so narrowly. What I have seen is, that they were white.
Have you ever made the beds of married persons?
Yes, I made all the beds of the house in general.
What was the appearance of the marks you saw on Bergami's bed?
You will pardon me? I have not reflected on this.
Were they dry or wet?
They were wet.19
The perhaps juiciest detail of the whole trial was the rumour that Pergami was physically unable to have an affair with Caroline in the first place. As the story went, “following his campaigns in Russia, [Pergami] underwent different operations [...] and [was] wholly deprived of the means of satisfying a woman”.20 In a letter to his close friend Lord Byron, radical politician John Cam Hobhouse jokingly claims that Henry Brougham - Caroline's main defender - "has Bergami's b—x [bollocks] in a bottle”.21 Poet Thomas Moore, another close friend of Byron and Hobhouse, noted in his journal: "[T]he idea is now that the Queen's defence will be neither more nor less than that Bergami the imputed adulterer, is a Castrato - what a comical denouement!"22
Byron, being of course an expert in all things sexual, was not convinced:
The Queen’s defence is not relevant – unless Bergamo’s rod be with his “b–ll–x in the bottle” because in Italy the women prefer the “Musici” [castrati] for two reasons – first they do not impregnate them – and next as they never (“sborano mai”) spend – they go on “in eterno” and serve an elderly lady at all times – being constantly in line of battle, or ready to form – without exhausting themselves.23
The question whether poor Pergami had had indeed frozen off his testicles or his penis or both or neither, was, however, overshadowed by the most meme-worthy incident of the trial - the “non mi ricordo” of Caroline’s Italian servant Theodore Majocchi.
Majocchi was the first witness of the persecution. At the beginning of the trial, he seemed to have a remarkably good memory. He recalled that Pergami used to urinate in a bottle so he did not have to leave the carriage he shared with Caroline and even imitated an erotic dance that a man called Mahomet had allegedly performed for her.24 At some point between this testimony and the next day, however, Majocchi must have been struck with amnesia. When cross-examined by Henry Brougham, all he could say was "non mi ricordo" - "I don't remember".25
The legendary phrase was uttered more than eighty times on this day - much to the amusement of the courtroom.26 The public, who was still overwhelmingly on Caroline's side, was delighted. And "non mi ricordo" was suddenly everywhere. William Hone's satire against the King Non mi ricordo! went through thirty (!) editions in one year. Other satirical pieces that were in the same vein likewise made ample use of the phrase (e.g. Half-a-Crown lost! Examination extraordinaire of the Vice R-y of B-d-y Boro!). On 1 October 1820, Thomas Moore facetiously recorded in his otherwise well-kept journal: “Non mi ricordo”.27 The three words quickly permeated all aspects of society: according to Pick's Annual Racing Calendar (vol. 35, 1820), no fewer than three race horses called “Non mi ricordo” made their appearance that year.
Caroline’s supporters had found their rallying cry. And even though a small majority of MPs in the House of Lords eventually voted in favour of the bill (hence finding the Queen Consort guilty), public sentiment continued to run so high that the government decided to withdraw the bill altogether.28 (They also had reason to fear that the House of Commons would decide in favour of Caroline.)29 The Queen Regent had won, her allies celebrated, but the victory lasted only a short time. She died a few months later without having been crowned.
Caroline’s trial exemplified important aspects of 1820s culture: the extreme unpopularity of George IV, the constant danger of political unrest by a largely disenfranchised populace (fewer than 10 % of adult men had the right to vote prior to 1832), the near-ubiquity of licentious gossip and the - at least when compared to the Victorian Age - relatively liberal approach to sex.
Robins, Jane. Rebel Queen: How the Trial of Caroline Brought England to the Brink of Revolution. Simon & Schuster, 2006. p. 16. https://archive.org/details/rebelqueenhowtri0000robi.
ibid.
Robins, p. 18. The marriage nevertheless resulted in a child, Charlotte Augusta of Wales, who was extremely popular with the British people and was seen as a champion of liberal causes. Unfortunately, she died in 1817, shortly after having given birth to a still-born son. To ensure the succession, her father’s three unmarried brothers quickly married and began what can best be described as a baby-making contest. Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, and Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld won the contest. Their daughter would grow up to be Queen Victoria.
Robins, p. 25.
Robins, p. 30-32.
Robins, p. 62.
Robins, p. 79.
Robins, p. 79-80.
Robins, p. 80.
Robins, p. 80-81.
Robins, p. 84.
Robins, p. 92-94.
Robins, p. 123-124.
Robins, p. 85-86.
Robins, p. 96-97.
Robins, p. 116-117.
Robins, p. 132.
Robins, p. 142.
Barron, Edward. The Legislatorial Trial of Her Majesty Caroline Amelia Elizabeth, Queen of England. Printed and published by H. Rowe, 1820. p. 233. https://books.google.de/books?id=uVGvBV7EH74C.
qtd. in Fraser, Flora. The Unruly Queen. The Life of Queen Caroline. Anchor Books, 1996. https://archive.org/details/unrulyqueenlifeo0000fras_f8v1. p. 268. Poet Thomas Moore also recorded the rumour in his journal: “fear that [William] Gell has the same story about Bergami’s impotence which was the consequence it seems of his being frozen in Russia - all the same Bergami told him so himself & all the servants knew it”. Moore, Thomas. The Journal of Thomas Moore. Edited by Wilfred S. Dowden. U of Delaware P, 1984. vol. 1, p. 333-334 (also see p. 341 and 351).
Hobhouse, John Cam. Byron's Bulldog: The Letters of John Cam Hobhouse to Lord Byron. Edited by Peter W. Graham. Ohio State UP, 1984. p. 296.
Moore, Thomas. The Journal of Thomas Moore. Edited by Wilfred S. Dowden. U of Delaware P, 1984. vol. 1, p. 326.
Cochran, Peter, editor. The Byron-Hobhouse Correspondence: Vol III: 23 January 1818 to 2 April 1824. 2010, petercochran.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/byron-and-hobhouse-1818-1824.pdf. p. 75, original emphasis.
Robins, p. 196.
Louise Dumont, the Queen Consort’s former maid, suffered from a similar bout of amnesia. Her “"Je ne me rapelle pas” was likewise widely ridiculed, e.g. in The Cock of Cotton Walk, and Maid of All Work, Alias "Non Mi Ricordo," and "Je Ne Me Rappelle Pas". Introduced as Principal Supporters to the Wonderful Green Bag : a Poem.
Fraser, p. 424.
Moore, Thomas. The Journal of Thomas Moore. Edited by Wilfred S. Dowden. U of Delaware P, 1984. vol. 1, p. 347.
Robins, p. 285.
ibid.
Great stuff. Looking forward to the next!