|
I have read this but it was decades ago and I don't think I really appreciated the subtlety of Strachey's technique; hence, it is almost like reading it for the first time.
I have finished the first chapter "Antecedents" and already there is a fine use of a sardonic undercurrent in Strachey's approach to the characters. The engaging Princess Caroline for all her capricious impulsiveness has "always longed for liberty; and she had never possessed it". Owing to a dysfunctional family she is engaged in a rudderless search for a meaningful relationship.
She is married off to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. He is clever, manipulative, and very cold. He saw his primary duty was to tame "a tumultuous Princess" He did it methodically.
"Cold and formal in manner, collected in speech, careful in action, he soon dominated the wild, impetuous, generous creature by his side."
I think the word "creature" is significant. Leopold was both Machiavellian and very sinister. His wife was property--royal though she was. Particularly horrible is the Prince's refusal to change the inferior medical treatment given to the Princess on the medical advice of Caroline's Doctor causing her to die after giving birth to a dead boy.
After her death, a succession crisis looms and we meet the various worthless sons of the mad King. Most of the time is spent on the absurd, patriarchal, foolish, Duke of Kent, who also marries strictly to have a child. There seems to be little affection of any kind between himself and Victoria Mary Louisa the sister of Prince Leopold. In fact, the duke is far more worried about how a marriage to her will hurt the feelings of his mistress, Madame St Laurent.
Thus we are given an introduction which presents two very nasty men; one is sinister the other a fool. Both use women to obtain certain ends. The Prince fails, but one wonders what type of influence Leopold would have exerted had she lived.
The section ends with the birth of another Princess. How will she fare?
|