Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill: (Georgian Series)

by Jean Plaidy

  It was not the right attitude perhaps, thought the Queen. Oh dear, she did hope this was going to be an end to these family quarrels.

  ‘Mr Pitt seems to think that it is a bad thing that there should be enmity in the family.’

  The King frowned at her. Charlotte should know by now that he never talked State matters with her. She was not supposed to mention the name of Mr Pitt. But there was gossip, of course. There was chatter. He was talking to her about the return of the Prince of Wales to the heart of the family simply because it was a domestic matter and these were the only matters he discussed with her.

  ‘I think it’s a good thing that there should be no enmity in the family. Anyone would agree to that, eh, what?’

  ‘But certainly. Oh, how pleased I am that he did not marry that woman. I am surprised in a way because I have heard that she is a very pleasant creature.’

  A very pleasant creature, thought the King; and a very beautiful one by all accounts. They had all found beautiful women for themselves, except the King. He had Charlotte. How old she looked! Poor plain little Charlotte. Yet he had been faithful to her, in deed if not in thought, since their marriage.

  Well, he was getting old now and he was glad he had been a good husband.

  ‘Have you warned the Princesses?’ he asked.

  What a way to talk of the return of a brother! thought the Queen. Warned!

  ‘Yes, I have told them that they may expect a visit from their brother.’

  ‘Hm, and what did they say to that?’

  ‘They are delighted. Amelia was so excited that she bounced up and down in her chair and shot her milk all over the table.’

  The King’s face creased into a smile. ‘Oh, she did then, eh, what? I must go and ask her if she is equally excited by a visit from her Papa.’

  The very mention of Amelia’s name soothed the King. He doted on the child; in fact the stern rules which the others had to obey were not in force for Amelia. She could imperiously climb on to her father’s knee and ask him ridiculous questions and make him sing songs to her – and he merely obeyed her, the love shining from his eyes. She was doubly precious because they had lost Octavius and Alfred – and Sophia the next youngest was six years her senior. It was small wonder that Amelia was his pet.

  He rose, the prospect of seeing his youngest daughter temporarily wiping away the anxieties he felt by the impending reunion with his eldest son.

  ‘She will be in the nursery now,’ said the Queen.

  ‘Then I will call on Her Royal Highness.’

  His good humour was completely restored and when he arrived at the nursery he found his youngest daughter sitting on the floor playing with her toys and kneeling there with her was Miss Burney to whom he had heard Amelia had taken a great fancy.

  ‘Hello, Papa,’ said the Princess, scarcely turning her head, while Miss Burney stood up and curtsied.

  ‘Come, Miss Burney,’ said Amelia. ‘It is my turn. Watch. Watch.’

  His Majesty is here, Ma’am,’ whispered Fanny to the little girl.

  ‘I know, but it is my turn.’

  ‘You cannot play while His Majesty is waiting to speak to you, Ma’am,’ said the agitated Fanny who was never quite sure how to behave in a situation which she had not visualized happening, and about which she had not been able to consult that doyen of court behaviour, Mrs Delaney.

  The little girl looked surprised. ‘Can I not?’ she asked. Then: ‘Go away, Papa. Go away.’

  ‘What?’ cried the King. ‘Eh, what?’

  And Fanny stood by, blushing and mortified.

  ‘Papa, I said: Go away. We want to play. So Papa … go. Go.’

  The King looked at Fanny and smiled and then picked up the child in his arms.

  ‘Why not a welcome for your old papa?’ he asked.

  ‘But it is my turn,’ she explained.

  How beautiful, he thought. Youth! The little nose, the soft skin with just a freckle or two, the fair hair, the blue eyes of her race. This child makes everything worth while for me. Charlotte produced her … not Sarah Lennox. Sarah could not have given him a lovelier child than this one.

  ‘Papa,’ said Amelia sternly. ‘It is my turn.’

  ‘It is my turn to kiss my little Amelia.’

  ‘Then do so and be quick,’ she cried imperiously. ‘Now, Miss Burney. Take me. Come here, Miss Burney. Take me, I say. Oh, Miss Burney, come here.’

  She was kicking and struggling while Fanny stood there uncertain how to act when the King put his daughter down.

  He smiled at Fanny. He liked her. He was amused by her. She had had her book printed because she had thought it would look well in print, she had told him. He had always remembered that. Very fair indeed, he had said at the time. That’s being very fair and honest.

  ‘Well, Miss Burney,’ he said, ‘the Princess Amelia seems to approve of you, eh, what?’

  ‘I … yes, Your Majesty.’

  ‘And that,’ he said, ‘is very fair and honest, eh?’

  There was great excitement in the Princesses’ apartments.

  ‘Just fancy,’ said the Princess Royal, ‘he is our brother and yet it’s as though we are to receive a call from visiting royalty.’

  ‘I wonder how he and Papa will get on,’ added Augusta. ‘I wonder if they will start quarrelling immediately or wait a while.’

  ‘They will have to be very polite just at first,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Mr Pitt’s orders.’

  ‘Is Mr Pitt so very important?’ asked Sophia.

  ‘Very! The most important man in the country. He’s not married, you know.’ That was the Princess Royal, who thought a great deal about marriage. She was twenty-one and most Princesses had been found a husband at that age.

  ‘Well,’ laughed Augusta, ‘you don’t think they’ll let you marry him even if he’s not, do you?’

  ‘I often think it would be helpful if we were allowed to marry commoners – our own countrymen. Then there wouldn’t be all this difficulty in finding husbands for us. It’s well-nigh impossible when they must be foreign royalty and Protestant. And there are so many of us, some of us are sure to be left out.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Elizabeth, ‘I think that Papa won’t let any of us marry.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ cried Charlotte.

  ‘Well, he is strange, is he not? He talks so quickly and goes on and on repeating himself. Don’t say you haven’t noticed that he seems to get worse instead of better. I think he feels strangely about us. He wants us to be virgins all our lives.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ wailed Charlotte.

  ‘We shall have to have secret lovers,’ said Augusta, her eyes sparkling.

  ‘Or be like George and marry in secret,’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘But George didn’t marry. That’s what all the fuss has been about. Mr Fox denied it in Parliament. They thought he had but he hadn’t all the time.’

  ‘It will be wonderful to see George. Such exciting things always happen to him. Do you remember when he was always in our apartments and sending those long letters to Mary Hamilton?’

  ‘At first I thought he’d come to see us.’

  ‘I think,’ said the Princess Charlotte enviously, ‘that it must be the most exciting thing in the world to be George.’

  ‘All you need to have done,’ said Augusta, ‘was to have been born four years earlier and a boy. Then you would have been the Prince of Wales. That would have suited you, Charlotte.’

  Charlotte admitted that it would have suited her very well indeed.

  Then they began to talk of the stories they had heard of the Prince of Wales until Charlotte, remembering the presence of Mary and Sophia, signed to them to change the subject – which would of course be taken up again with relish as soon as the younger girls were no longer with them.

  There was an air of excitement at tea-time with the equerries. Everyone was aware of it – the charming Colonel Digby of whom Fanny was growing more than a little fond; pleasant and careless Colone
l Manners who never paused to think what he might be saying; and Colonel Goldsworthy who was constantly gossiping. This was one of the most enjoyable hours of Fanny’s day, but only on those occasions when Madam von Schwellenburg was too tired or indisposed to take charge. At such times as this the Colonels would vie with each other to poke fun at the disagreeable old woman which, decided Fanny, she fully deserved, and as she was quite unaware of their suppressed amusement – there was no harm done.

  But this was a happy evening, with the gentlemen all paying attention to Fanny – and in particular Colonel Digby – and the conversation running on the Prince’s imminent visit.

  Colonel Goldsworthy of course knew all the gossip, and Colonel Manners told some amusing stories about the Prince’s exploits and Colonel Digby was flirting to such an extent with Fanny that she really thought that he might be considering making a proposal of marriage.

  It was all most diverting.

  Colonel Goldsworthy was warning Fanny what she must expect when winter came to Windsor.

  ‘Ah, you are well enough now, Miss Burney, in your lilac tabby and your little jacket, but wait until the autumn. There is enough wind in these passages to carry a man o’ war. So on no account attend early prayers after October. You’ll see Her Majesty and the Princesses and all their attendants soon start to cough and sniffle and then … one by one they disappear. You’ll find that after November not a soul goes to the chapel but the King and the parson and myself. And I only go because I have to. I’ll swear it’s the same with the parson.’

  ‘So His Majesty is the stoic, Miss Burney,’ Colonel Manners added.

  ‘I am sure His Majesty would always do his duty.’

  ‘Even to letting the whole family perish with the cold.’

  ‘They seem to have survived a great many winters, Colonel Manners. But I do declare it must be most trying if one wished to sneeze in the royal presence.’

  ‘That one must never do, Miss Burney. It is forbidden.’

  ‘What happens if one does sneeze? A sneeze will on occasions creep on one unawares.’

  ‘Is that so, Miss Burney? Is there not a slight tickle in the nose … a few warnings? They do say that if the forefinger is placed under the nose, so, and the breath held, the sneeze can be suppressed.’

  ‘Oh dear, I do hope that if I ever feel a need to sneeze I shall remember that.’

  Colonel Digby said that if he were at hand she need only ask him. His finger was always available to be applied beneath Miss Burney’s charming nose.

  Fanny giggled. ‘But Colonel Digby, how could I warn you in time?’

  ‘Never mind. Should you commit this most serious offence I should take the blame.’

  ‘Colonel Digby, you are too good.’

  His eyes were fervent. Oh dear, thought Fanny, what a good thing we are not alone … or is it?

  Then Colonel Digby asked Fanny what she was reading and the conversation turned to literary matters which did not please the others; so Colonel Manners talked of the King and the coming visit of the Prince in order to lure Miss Burney and Colonel Digby from the subject which interested them both so much. If he did not, he knew that in a short time they would be talking about Dr Johnson and James Boswell and the literary set of which Fanny had been a member until she came to Court.

  ‘They’ll never understand each other,’ Colonel Manners was saying. ‘You wait, H.R.H. won’t be in the Lodge more than an hour or so before the fur starts to fly. Like to take a bet on it, Digby? What about you, Manners?’

  ‘Make your bets,’ said Digby. ‘I’ll give them a few weeks. But both of them will be on their best behaviour for a while, at any rate.’

  ‘Is it possible?’ asked Manners.

  ‘Mr Pitt’s orders,’ added Goldsworthy. ‘His Highness has to be grateful for his windfall; somewhere in the region of £200,000, I’ve heard. Wouldn’t you expect affability for that? As for His Majesty, well as I said, he has had his instructions. Family devotions is the order of the day.’

  ‘Can they keep it up?’ asked Manners.

  ‘They’ll manage … for a while. The King is a stoic.’

  Goldsworthy cut in: ‘You’ve no idea. Why, yesterday I was hunting with His Majesty. He doesn’t spare himself … nor his attendants. There we were trotting … riding … galloping. The er … I beg your pardon, I fear, Miss Burney, but I was going to say a strange word. The er … perspiration … was pouring from us so that we were wet through, popping over ditches and jerking over gates from eight in the morning till five or six in the afternoon. Then back to the Lodge, looking like so many drowned rats with not a dry thread among us, nor a morsel within us, sore to the bone and … forced to smile all the time. And then His Majesty offered me refreshment. “Here, Goldsworthy,” he said, “have a little barley water, eh, what?” And there was His Majesty taking his barley water from a jug fit for a sick room … the sort of thing, Miss Burney, you would find on a hob in a chimney for some poor miserable soul who keeps his bed.’

  They were all laughing, visualizing Goldsworthy’s discomfiture.

  ‘And what do you think,’ went on the garrulous Colonel, ‘the Prince of Wales will say if he is offered barley water?’

  They were all laughing. And that was how it was on those evenings when Fanny was mistress of the tea table and Schwellenburg delighted them all by her absence.

  And soon they, like everyone else at Windsor, were back to the subject of the Prince of Wales.

  All the way to Windsor the Prince was thinking of Maria as he drove his phaeton at frantic speed to relieve his feelings. With any other woman he would not have worried. Well, with any other woman it would not have been of vital importance. But he had not seen Maria since she had closed her doors on him and he was getting desperate.

  Now he had to go through this silly farce of reunion. As if there ever could be a true reunion? As if he and his father could ever agree, or see anything from the same point of view. The King was an old bigot, a silly old despot without even the strength and the power to be one. He had no taste for art; and the only culture he possessed was for music; and even that was mainly confined to Handel.

  God help me! thought the Prince. What will it be? Evenings of Handel; lectures on the duty of princes; a game or two of backgammon; the dullest conversation in the world; services in that freezing chapel; more lectures on princes who must not act so as to be talked about; diatribes about Mr Fox, Mr Sheridan and the Whigs; more on the virtues of Mr Pitt and the Tories.

  And Maria? Where was Maria? What if she attempted to leave the country? He had given orders that he was to be told at once if she proposed any moves like that. He had given instructions that close watch was to be kept on her.

  How happy he would be if he were driving out to Richmond instead of Windsor … if only Maria, beautiful, desirable Maria were waiting for him instead of his doddering old father, his stupid mother and his simpering sisters. Well, perhaps he was wrong to condemn the Princesses. He had nothing against them. They, poor creatures, were what they were because they were forced to live like nuns in a convent. Poor Charlotte – twenty-one, she must be. His Maria had had two husbands before she was that age. Not that he cared to think about Maria’s previous husbands, except of course that it was her experiences which had made her the mature and fascinating creature she was – and of course they had both been older than she was and must have been dull creatures compared with her third – the Prince of Wales.

  Her third husband … that was the point!

  Would she ever forgive him? What could he do? Sherry must help him. It was no use calling on Fox. She hated Fox more than ever and who could wonder at it? Really Charles had gone too far!

  And here was Windsor and why was it not Marble Hill and how could he live without Maria? She must come back to him. Something must be done … or he would have no wish to live.

  The King received him formally, the Queen beside him. The Princesses were lined up and presented to him as though he had never met
them before.

  The girls clearly adored him; it was obvious in their faces. Not so the King and Queen.

  He could see the irritation he always provoked; it was apparent in the King’s bulging eyes and the twitching of his brows; and the Queen’s resentment was there too. She wanted to be part of his rich and exciting life. As if that were possible!

  But there was a pretence of affability; and later he attended a drawing room which was very public; many of his own attendants were present and the King chatted to him most of the time to show the company that all was well between them.

  But all was not well, thought the Prince. It was some months since he had seen the King and it might have been that he was therefore more aware of the change than those who saw him every day.

  By God, he thought, the old man’s changed. He talks too much and the repetition is greater than it used to be. He seems to lose the thread of what he’s saying. What does it mean?

  He wished that Fox were available so that he could report to him. If the King were going to be … ill, that could present a new and dazzling prospect. He wondered whether Pitt had noticed the alarming changes in his father.

  Yet even with such a prospect before him he could think of little but Maria. He would know no peace until he had explained to her that the fault was not his. Charles James Fox had gone too far. That must be his theme.

  Maria must come back to him. Whatever the world thought, to him she would always be his wife.

  So he went through the farce of friendship with the King; he was affable to the Queen; he talked to the Princesses, noticed that Charlotte was inclined to be bandy, thought what dull creatures they were – but then all women were dull when compared with Maria – and then was sorry for them because they would be prisoners for longer than he had been. He at least had made a part escape at the age of eighteen when he had set up Perdita Robinson in Cork Street.

  He thought of those days with pity. Had he really believed himself in love with Perdita? How could any emotion he would ever feel compare with his love for Maria? And Maria had left him … sworn she would never see him again.