The Strangest Family

by Janice Hadlow

  The king’s stays at Weymouth, so close to the fertile sheep runs of the Dorset Downs, placed him in the ideal position – both intellectually and geographically – to indulge his interests to the full. ‘On the Esplanade, the king met Mr Bridge, the eminent farmer and breeder of Wenford Eagle in this county,’ recorded Greville. ‘Talked much with him on the management of his farm and his sheep and promised to come and look at them.’10 The king’s reputation for buttonholing those who worked the land, with scant regard for ceremony, was well enough known for it to become the subject of one of James Gillray’s best-known caricatures of him. In Affability, produced in 1797, George peers closely into the face of a startled peasant farmer, rather lower down the social scale than the eminent Mr Bridge, and subjects him to a barrage of questions that mimics George’s idiosyncratic patterns of speech: ‘Well friend, where a’you going, hay? What’s your name, hay? Where d’ye live, hay, hay?’

  In August 1794, on one of their rides across the Downs, Greville and the king met ‘an intelligent young Somersetshire farmer’. So impressed was the king by the enthusiasm and ingenuity with which he cared for his flocks that he invited himself to Farmer Ham’s home, and soon became a regular visitor and confidant of his entire family. Ham’s niece Elizabeth recalled that the king would send

  one of his equerries to my father to enquire if his brother were at home, as it was the king’s intention to visit his farm that day. The king was so well pleased that this continued an annual event until his mind began to fail. As my father always received notice of this intended visit, he took it for granted that he was always to accompany His Majesty, and in consequence they became quite gossiping acquaintances. The king was scarcely ever in Weymouth a day before he took my father by the button to learn all the news.11

  The young Elizabeth Ham was an interested, if sceptical, witness to her farming family’s dealings with the king. Unlike almost everyone else in Weymouth, she was defiantly resistant to the tide of loyalty that had engulfed the little town. She secretly wore a locket containing a picture of Napoleon Bonaparte, and, given those sympathies, her recollections inject a more astringent tone into the vision of royal life at the sedate resort. She refused to be beguiled into rose-coloured pictures of any kind, even when applied to her own close family. Thus, in her account, her uncle, ‘the intelligent young farmer’ of Greville’s description, is ‘a shrewd, hard-headed man’ whose machinations are driven by greed and rarely bode well for his naive brother, her father. She adds a similarly barbed footnote to Greville’s story of the king’s professional interest in Farmer Ham’s livestock. ‘The king admired some sheep of my uncle’s, and commissioned him to procure a flock of the same sort for his farm in Windsor. This was accordingly done through a cousin who resided in Somersetshire, and who sent his own shepherds with the flock to Windsor. Neither the sheep nor the expenses attending to them were ever paid for.’12 In Elizabeth Ham’s world, idylls – whether rural or royal – did not have much of a place.

  Unconscious of the beady-eyed disapproval of this unimpressed young observer, the king was probably as happy on the Downs above Weymouth as he was anywhere else in his world. There he could surround himself with men whose work he respected and understood, with whom he felt naturally and unselfconsciously at home. He was as at ease in their houses as he was in their fields. His conversation was of ewes and rams rather than Cabinets and treaties. It was surely this enticing image of the life he might have enjoyed as a private man that lured him back year after year to this unexceptionable small town. Nothing else Weymouth had to offer could compete with the compelling vision of an alternative existence that destiny, inheritance and duty had combined to deny him.

  There were other attractions, of course, although some found them more pleasurable than others. When the royal family was in residence, Weymouth Bay was patrolled by the Royal Navy, and the king made full personal use of the warships, organising excursions up and down the coast, standing out to sea to catch a sight of the Channel fleet in full sail, or crossing over to Portland, where ‘their Majesties, with their family, dined at the Portland Arms at the small romantic village of Chesilton’. Whether the promise of such treats was enough to compensate the queen and her daughters for numerous, less successful trips – such as the one to Lulworth Cove when they endured hours of hard sailing and were forced to beat back towards Weymouth in the teeth of a hostile wind – seems doubtful. With the exception of Augusta, who never lost her love for all things nautical, any pleasure the queen and her other daughters took in maritime expeditions did not long survive their repeated experiences of seaborne misery at Weymouth. Greville, who delicately absented himself from the king’s boating projects, witnessed one unhappy ending to ‘a party of pleasure’, which ‘had not exactly answered its expectations’. Conditions that day were so bad that ‘the coming on board and leaving the ships was by no means an easy ceremony, and Her Majesty and the princesses were a great deal alarmed in rowing in and from the frigate’.13 Some of them were seasick; all of them were distressed; and the queen was so badly shaken by the first part of her journey that she had to be persuaded to leave the frigate at all when it was time to get back in the boats and head for the shore. She was so terrified of these excursions that eventually the king put a reluctant stop to them.

  The royal women were happier with land-based entertainments, especially visits to the theatre. Although Fanny Burney, who took a semi-professional interest in the stage, viewed Weymouth’s theatrical offerings with faintly patronising disdain (‘’Tis a pretty little theatre, but its entertainment is quite in the barn style; a mere medley – songs, dance, imitations – and all very bad’), the king and queen, whose tastes were less exacting, were regular attendees.14 Greville saw She Stoops to Conquer there, as well as lesser works such as Animal Magnetism and Ways and Means, which he thought ‘very tolerably acted’. There were, however, ‘no actors of any note’ until the arrival of Sarah Siddons, the most highly regarded female performer of her generation. Like the king, she was in Weymouth for her health – Fanny Burney spotted her walking purposefully with her family on the sands, ‘a lady of very majestic port and demeanour’ – but she was soon enticed to take to the stage for George and Charlotte. In Fanny’s view it was not a great success; Mrs Siddons specialised in the epic tragic roles, and was not well suited to the type of comedies the king enjoyed. Fanny noted: ‘Gaiety does not sit naturally on her – it seems like disguised gravity.’ Comic actors fared much better at the seaside, the best winning over even the hard-to-please Fanny, who admitted that ‘the burlesque of Quick and Mrs Wells made me laugh immoderately’.15

  When the theatre palled, other gatherings filled up the time. ‘On Sunday evenings,’ recalled Elizabeth Ham, ‘the Assembly Rooms were opened for tea and promenade. This the king never missed.’ A cord was drawn across the room to distinguish ‘those who had the entrée’ from those who did not, and the royal family were conducted beyond it by the Master of Ceremonies, ‘with a candle in each hand, who walked backwards before them, up the stairs and into the ballroom’. Curious Weymouth-ites could also attend public breakfasts where, before the dancing began, they were permitted to gaze through an open marquee and watch the king enjoying his favourite simple meals. ‘His loving subjects could enjoy the satisfaction of seeing their beloved monarch draw a drumstick through his teeth, in which he seemed to delight,’ wrote Elizabeth Ham tartly, ‘and hearing him call for “Buttered Peas” and “Moneymusk” to set the dancers in motion.’ These were the tunes that accompanied the country dances that were then ‘the only ones in vogue’; but Elizabeth Ham noticed ‘the princesses never joined in … on these occasions’.16

  Like the king, Charlotte and her daughters appreciated Weymouth’s lack of formality. ‘The princesses enjoy the ease they have here,’ noted Mrs Harcourt, observing that ‘even the queen goes about with only one lady and goes into the shops’.17 The favoured shopping destination was Delamotte’s, which opened at half past five in the m
orning to accommodate the early hours kept by the king. When they had made their purchases, the princesses accompanied their father on his lengthy walks along the Esplanade, on one occasion waiting patiently while the king ‘stopped and talked to all the children he met’.18 For other occupation, the princesses had their needlework, which they undertook with their mother, sitting in covered chairs on the lawns in front of Gloucester Lodge. Sometimes their quiet days were enlivened by the arrival of unexpected visitors. In August 1794, a caravan drew up near Gloucester Lodge which turned out to be ‘the conveyance of two brothers called the Albinos from the mountains of Chamonix’. Everyone – the king, the queen, the princesses and of course the ever-inquisitive Greville – ‘honoured them with a visit inside their caravan, and were surprised at these extraordinary-looking people. They have strong milk-white hair, their eyebrows, eyelashes and beards white. The skin of their heads was of a pinkish colour, and their eyes also inclined to pink.’ Despite their unusual appearance, ‘they spoke very tolerable French, were affable in their manner and well bred in their behaviour’.19

  In the evenings, there were cards, played with a determined regularity that even news of the death of the queen’s elder sister Christiane – who died a spinster, Charlotte’s marriage having made her own planned union with the Duke of Roxburghe impossible – did not interrupt, somewhat to the surprise of onlookers. Sometimes there were ‘parties at home’, but, as Mrs Harcourt noted, these did not include any company from outside the inner household, and especially no new male guests: ‘Lord Chesterfield and the other gentlemen in attendance are the only men who are invited; they do not wish to encourage people to pursue them here.’20

  There were occasional visits from the princes and their friends, who descended on the sedate surroundings of Gloucester Lodge bringing with them the unmistakeable whiff of dissolute bad behaviour. The Prince of Wales, Ernest and Lord Clermont arrived back from a trip on HMS Minotaur, where they had ‘taken so liberal a potation that they were much animated, and poor Lord Walsingham totally overcome by it. They left him, stripped and laid out on a couch aboard the Minotaur under the care and protection of Admiral McBride, who promises to return him safe on shore tomorrow.’21 The brothers rarely stayed very long in Weymouth, unless compelled to do so. They had no appetite for its quiet pleasures, preferring the gamier appeal of the Prince of Wales’s house along the coast at Brighton.

  It was not just the princes who found that time at the king’s favourite little town dragged out slowly. ‘Nothing but the sea affords Weymouth any life or spirit,’ confessed Fanny Burney. Infected perhaps by the same sense of ennui, the queen’s dislike of the town grew stronger with every visit. She described it to Lady Harcourt as ‘this unenjoyable place’, and was convinced that, in spite of its alleged health-giving properties, it actually made her ill. ‘The heat, when we first arrived did not agree with me,’ she wrote in 1800, ‘and according to old custom, brought on my complaint in my bowels and rendered me so stupefied that I could not employ myself, which is, I do assure you, the strongest proof of my being disordered.’22

  The most passionate denunciation of the resort’s limitations came from the queen’s fourth daughter, Mary, who, beneath a polite demeanour, boiled in frustration. ‘This place is more dull and stupid than I can find words to express,’ she fumed on her second visit to Weymouth in 1798, ‘a perfect standstill of everything and everybody, except every ten days a long review, that I am told is very fine, but being perfectly unknowing in these things, come home less amused than before I left home.’23 She was resentful at the isolated existence she and her sisters led there, surrounded by elderly courtiers. ‘I do not know one soul except Sir William and Lady Pitt, the Pouletts and that poor little duet, Lord and Lady Sudeley.’ The tedium of it all provoked her beyond measure. ‘George Pitt’s stupid old father is now at Weymouth. He looks as if he died three months ago, and was taken out of his coffin to come and show that he was alive to the king.’24 Her older sisters, as was their custom, were more discreet; but it is hard to imagine Mary was alone in her condemnation of their somnolent visits.

  The king, for whom Weymouth was a welcome interlude of peace in otherwise crowded days, found it a soothing balm for his frazzled spirits. In the more circumscribed lives of the queen and her daughters, their sojourns at Weymouth served less as breaks from daily routine than as amplifications of it. If the princesses had nursed hopes that their lives might change following the terrible catalyst of their father’s illness, the limitations of their experiences at Weymouth soon extinguished them. Whatever the landscape, their role in it seemed destined to remain the same: dutiful deliverers of support and comfort to their parents.

  The queen had her own disappointments. Any optimism she may have cherished that things could return to the way they had been before her husband’s illness ebbed away during the early 1790s. Sea-bathing and fresh air could do nothing to help her recover the playful pleasure in life that had briefly emerged as such an attractive aspect of her character. Now the best of which she felt herself capable was a detached resignation, a disciplined withdrawal from any greater expectations. ‘I am … of the opinion that the best thing is to enjoy what I have and not to make myself uneasy about things in which no human power can direct,’ she wrote to her son Augustus in 1791. ‘The real wants in life are few; sufficient for myself, and if possible, a little more for the relief of neighbours, is perfect happiness for me.’25

  It was not at Weymouth but at Frogmore, the little house she owned in Windsor Park, that Charlotte came closest to achieving this ideal. There she sought to create for herself a calm retreat where the stresses of the public world were kept firmly at bay and only those she truly loved were welcome. ‘A life of constant hurry and bustle is not reasonable,’ she mused, as she surveyed her small domain. ‘A country life is to be preferred, but we must not forget the society of which we are part. My own taste is for a few select friends, whose cheerfulness of temper and instructive conversation will pass the time away without leaving any time for remorse.’26

  Regretful feelings were kept at bay by filling her days with the mild, rational enjoyments she loved. Botany remained her favourite pursuit, and exotic plants arrived at Frogmore from collectors around the world; they were sketched, dried and duly classified, her daughters acting as her assistants in her studies. ‘Mama sits in a very small green room which she is fond of,’ wrote Elizabeth, ‘reads, writes and botanises. Augusta and me remain in the room next to hers across a passage and employ ourselves in much the same way.’27 Soon Charlotte was keen to translate what she had learnt into an ambitious programme of practical gardening. She had a greenhouse erected, ‘by all connoisseurs allowed to be very fine’, and employed a horticulturally inclined clergyman to help her plan the planting. ‘It is at present in the midst of a kitchen garden, where there is no garden stuff except a few old cabbages,’ noted Princess Elizabeth, although she was certain it would, with a little work, emerge as ‘a perfect bijou’.28

  As the garden flourished, Charlotte extended her ambitions to the landscape around it, erecting a number of decorative buildings to adorn the view. Elizabeth, the most artistically gifted of the sisters, was encouraged to design many of them. The intention was to create an elegant retreat, which was to be simple, but certainly not austere. The grounds soon included a thatched hermitage, an octagonal Temple of Solitude and a barn big enough to be used as a ballroom. There was also a lake backed by artificial hills and a specially constructed Gothic ruin, where Charlotte and her daughters had their breakfast when the weather allowed. In her comfortably appointed and, above all, very private home (visitors were strictly by invitation only) the queen was as happy as she was anywhere. To Fanny Burney she spoke ‘with delight of its quiet and ease, and her enjoyment of its complete retirement’.29 It was not for nothing that she described Frogmore as ‘my little paradise’.30

  But however hard Charlotte tried to keep the real world at a distance, some events proved impossible t
o ignore. The royal family had been at Weymouth in 1789 when the first accounts of the Revolution in France began to break. On 17 July – three days after the storming of the Bastille – ‘Mr Parish, a brother-in-law of Miss Planta’s came in the evening, just arrived from France’, and horrified Fanny Burney with his account of the ‘confusion, commotion and impending revolution’ he had witnessed there.31 At Gloucester Lodge the news was received with apprehension and concern. But for some, the fall of a monarchy that had ruled without offering voice or influence to those who lived under its government was an occasion to be celebrated. ‘How much the greatest event this is that ever happened in the world!’ declared the Whig Charles Fox. ‘And how much the best!’ Now, optimists declared, there was the opportunity to bring about the establishment of the first genuinely modern state, founded on rational and equable principles rather than sclerotic and unjust customary right.

  Not surprisingly, neither George nor Charlotte shared any of this enthusiasm. Both realised the magnitude of what was unfolding across the Channel, and saw that it struck at everything they represented and believed. As an assiduous reader of Rousseau, the queen understood that the Revolution was the crucible in which a war of ideas was being fought out, a conflict in which the new thinking of the Enlightenment was poised to do battle with older traditions of hierarchy, duty and obligation. ‘God knows, the want of principle and the forgetting of all duties towards God and man, and the want of religion are regarded as the causes of the unhappiness of our neighbours,’ she wrote to her brother Charles at the end of 1789. Charlotte struggled to understand God’s purpose in allowing it to happen at all. ‘Perhaps Providence has sent these unhappy events to bring man back to right.’32