A Humble Companion

Laurie Graham

To Mr F. purveyor of tea and encouragement

PROLOGUE

We buried Sofy last week. I would have wished to be with her at the end but when a person takes such an age to die it’s easy enough to be caught off guard. The message came that it was feared she could not last the day, and by the time I got to Kensington there was black crêpe on the bell knob and the chamber nurse was burning vinegar in a coal scuttle. I really had no place there. I wasn’t family and I wasn’t a servant. There was only one useful thing I could do and that was to make sure her last wishes were respected.

They turned out drawers and cupboards looking for her will while I sat at the door of her room like a grizzled old hound. If I’d allowed them to take her to Windsor she’d surely have haunted me the rest of my days. It was Mr Drummond who settled the matter. He came all the way from Charing Cross bearing a letter from his bank vault with Sofy’s seal upon it. She wished to be laid to rest in the new garden cemetery at Kensal Green, exactly as I’d told them.

It was a modest funeral procession for the daughter of a king. There were no mutes, no plume bearers, just a hearse and six and a plain velvet pall. The Prince Consort was represented by an equerry, the King of Hanover and Lord Melbourne both sent their empty coaches, and I rode in the last mourning carriage with Dr Snow, who had attended her at the end, Mrs Martin, her French reader, and her dresser, Mrs Corcoran.

By the plainness of my costume and the limberness that speaks of an active life Dr Snow took me to be an elderly servant of some kind. He was an observant young man, which may be the best any of us can hope for in a physician. I corrected him gently. My position in Sofy’s life was an unusual one, the result of a royal experiment: a radical notion dreamed up by the most unradical of kings, old George, that his daughter should have a playfellow, a humble companion plucked from the ranks of ordinary people so that she might have a better understanding of the world. I know very little of science but I believe the custom is never to dismiss an experiment as a failure but rather to salvage from it whatever lessons can be learned. In Sofy’s case the lesson was that the world can only be understood by living in it. Nevertheless, a girl kept cloistered behind palace walls can certainly be happier for knowing she has a friend.

I was plucked carefully, of course, not from any random harvest of draymen’s daughters or chimney-sweeping girls. There are degrees of humbleness, and Sofy was a Princess of the House of Hanover. Let’s just say that when the search for a suitable girl began I was in a position to be noticed, and for that I had to thank a steward in the household of Sofy’s brother George, Prince of Wales. I owed it all to the Comptroller and Clerk of His Royal Highness’s Kitchens and Cellars—a hatcher, broker, deviser and contriver, a man of business, ever alert to ways in which he might assist his royal master and his royal connections might repay him at an attractive rate of interest—my father, Louis Welche.

My career as humble companion began in 1788, when I was thirteen and Sofy was eleven. I cannot say I excelled at it but I never did so badly that I was dismissed. The gulf between us, the fact of her royal birth, didn’t go away. I suppose it never can, but somehow we reached across it. I was an only child, alone but not lonely; she suffered the loneliness of living in a vast family where everyone talked and no one listened. It’s easy enough to see what I gave Sofy. I seasoned her dull daily fare with news of where I’d been and what I’d seen, and in return, she gave me her secrets, so you might say her friendship was more generous than mine.

My title of Humble Companion was never officially dispensed with. From time to time it was brought out and dusted off, usually when some Royal Highness thought I had forgotten my place, but Sofy and I became true friends very quickly and so we remained, except for a few quarrels, until we were both grey old ladies.

A pen can do a great deal of hurt. Miss Fanny Burney gave me that warning a lifetime ago, though she did allow that some people are too puffed up to feel the point of even the sharpest quill, or to recognize themselves, no matter how skilfully they’re drawn. But Royalties are a particular case. They have few hiding places and if they are wronged they must choose between having redress or licking their wounds in dignified silence. I believe Miss Burney was a naturally kinder person than I am, and perhaps the prospect of a royal pension influenced her. A hundred pounds a year for life might keep anyone discreet. In any event I always remembered her words. I have waited to tell what I know until most of those it concerns are in a better place and those that aren’t…? The Devil take them.

I am now in my seventy-fourth year. I’ve seen out three kings and a multitude of royal highnesses, and lived to see Victoria upon the throne, long life to her. But Sofy is gone. Now she’s where gossip can’t wound her and secrets can’t stifle her. And so I shall tell her story.

1

My father wasn’t always Louis Welche. He was born Ludwig Weltje, the son of a Utrecht gingerbread maker. My grandfather Weltje heard there was a better living to be made in Brunswick, so he walked to Hanover and married a girl from the Luneberg Heath. A willingness to move on in the interests of business was in the Weltje blood. Papi and his brother Christoff both left Hanover when they were hardly more than boys and made their way to London. Uncle Christoff was employed in the kitchens of the old Duke of Gloucester; Papi sold Jew biscuits and ginger cakes from a cart, and they saved every penny they earned until they had enough to open a pastry shop.

Weltje’s became known for its good, plain fare: steak puddings with mustard gravy, mutton pies with caper relish, apple turnovers with cloves, and of course gingerbread—and as no Weltje money ever lay idle for a minute the profits were put to work in their next enterprise. They took over the lease of a chocolate house in St James’s Street. The Coconut Tree had always catered to young men about town, and under my father’s management it became quite the place to go.

The gaming tables were open until breakfast was served and a set of retiring rooms was kept for those who had drunk too deeply or gambled too rashly. That was how Papi gained the patronage of the Prince of Wales, and the friends who followed wherever he led. The Prince loved good food and a game of faro, and he appreciated the fatherly friendship of a discreet host: someone who turned a blind eye to a young man’s follies and was willing to help him out of his financial embarrassments without any fuss. When the Prince attained his majority in 1783 and was given his own establishment in Pall Mall he didn’t need to look far for a steward.

Uncle Christoff always said it was as well Papi was the one who’d been asked because he wouldn’t have had the patience for it himself. It was one thing to be a cook, to stay below stairs and quietly, invisibly go about your business. A steward was a very different animal. He could be envied and resented by those under him and blamed and bullied by those above him, and when all was said and done he was still a servant, no matter how grand his title. But servitude didn’t bother my father. He wore it lightly and used it cannily. All the butchers and vintners and grocers were eager to show their gratitude for a royal warrant, and the perquisites were substantial. The royal cinders and meat bones and oyster shells were Papi’s to dispose of to the road menders, and we were kept very comfortable on the sale of once-used tea, and pork and beef drippings from the royal kitchens, and beeswax candles, sometimes less than half consumed. The Prince of Wales demanded fresh tapers every night.

My father liked comfort and plenty himself, but only according to what he could afford. I see now how carefully he covered his disdain for the Prince’s wastefulness. He would never have permitted it in his own house. No son of his would have been allowed to grow up so extravagant, but my father had no son. There had been two boys, both stillborn, then my sister Eliza, then me. My parents’ marriage bed was hardly blessed, and in the spring of 1788 it was dealt another blow. Eliza went to Uncle Christoff’s house in the country to help Aunt Hanne with her sewing, and while she was there she caught the measles and died. Papi went alone to Hammersmith to bury her. My mother took to her bed.

Though Eliza was older than me by five years and was tall and rosy cheeked and gifted with a needle, her mind was trapped in perpetual childhood. It was a puzzle to know what to do with her and Mother hated the exertion of puzzles. Still, she loved Eliza very deeply so after she died it was ordained that she must never be spoken of again so as to spare Mother’s nerves. That was when my terrible hunger began. I ate and ate but nothing filled me, and our neighbour Miss Tod, who made it her business to call on Mother every day and cheer her up with reports of murder and mayhem, remarked that I looked like something the mudlarks had dragged out of the river, bloated and ghastly.

‘Don’t take it amiss, Nellie,’ she said. ‘I only mention it out of concern. We don’t want to lose you.’

From my earliest years I’d been warned against peering in mirrors. I’d formed the idea that it was as inadvisable as putting my hand in the fire, so I didn’t look to see if what Miss Tod had said was true. But the next evening Papi announced that as it was time for him to go to Brighton to prepare the Prince of Wales’s house for the season, he intended to take me with him to see if the sea air would do anything for me. I surmised that I must be looking very bad indeed.

First Mother feared it was madness to expose me unnecessarily to the dangers of travel. Then, after she had discussed it with her friends, she questioned whether Brighton was a suitable destination for any female who cared to keep their good name. As I recall, the strongest argument she could marshal was that an exceptionally high number of Brighton’s lady residents offered French lessons. The significance of this piece of intelligence sailed straight over my twelve-year-old head. It seemed a feeble objection and, anyway, Papi always had the last word. I went to Brighton.

The furthest I had ever gone out of London was to Hammersmith, to my uncle’s house. The idea of going to Brighton made me feel quite the intrepid traveller. I decided I must keep a journal, and what I began that summer I have kept up, more or less, ever since. From my first entry, June 22nd 1788, it seems I was impressed more by the variety of cakes available in the Brighton tea gardens and the number of novels stocked by the libraries than I was by my first sight of the sea. The sea shore was certainly a noisy place. The dippers shouted, their customers screamed, the horses whinnied to one another and the wheels of the bathing machines crunched over the pebbles. Still, the sea itself disappointed me. I had expected it to roar but all it did was sigh.

Brighton’s salty waters were recommended as a remedy for a great number of ailments. Some people bathed in them, some drank them too. The waters were what had brought the Prince of Wales there in the first place. He had what Papi called ‘the family complaint’: inflammation of the glands, eruptions of the skin. Whether the Brighton waters did anything for him, I cannot say, but Mrs Fitzherbert had an establishment there too so, as I eventually came to realize, that was one royal itch that could be scratched.

When the Prince decided he would like to visit Brighton often and must therefore have a place of his own where he could stay, Papi went as harbinger, inspected various properties and leased a house he believed would be suitable. On one side, convenient for its principal entrance, was the London Road, on the other the pleasant meadows of the Steine sloped down to the sea. The house was plain but substantial, a kind of villa, private enough for a Royal Highness but close to the Castle Inn where the Prince’s friends could put up. The Prince, who approved of Papi’s choice but could never bear to leave any lily ungilded, set about enlarging and improving it at once. It was nothing then to what it became, but to my young eyes it seemed like a delicious house. It was wide and low, cream on the outside, with some pillars and balconies, and on the inside, oh the inside … My journal records my impressions:

June 25th 1788

Today I saw the Prince of Wales’s rooms. His library is the colour of butter, his cabinet has a sky-blue ceiling and he sleeps under a sea-green tent made of silk. I suppose a prince may have any colours he pleases. His Royal Highness was expected today and I was afraid he would come and catch us looking at his accommodations but Papi said the Prince never arrives when he says he will.

We were lodged in a little cottage across the stable yard and my instructions were that if by chance I should ever find myself in the Royal Presence I should curtsey, lower my eyes and speak only if spoken to. I was also to remember that my given name is Cornelia. All very well, my father explained, to be called Nellie in the bosom of my family, but in higher circles it might be regarded as a name more suitable for a carthorse. As it happened I was in the kitchens, trailing behind Papi and dipping my finger in anything he stopped to taste, when the Prince appeared.

The very idea of a prince in a kitchen was so extraordinary and he came upon us so suddenly and billowed over me, tall and portly and smelling of oil of jessamine, that I quite forgot everything I’d been told. He asked my name. I said, ‘Nellie’. And I heard Papi sigh through his great purple nose.

I see that the Prince’s waistcoat was pink, worked with flowers in gold thread. Strange, if you had asked me to recall it I would have said it was sapphire blue, so thank heavens for journals. I also noted that he had several chins which spilled out over his neckcloth, and soft curls, like a baby’s hair. What I remember with great clarity is how I was emboldened by the gentleness of him. His eyes did dart away of course, before they settled back on me. It’s always the way when people look at me for the first time. I wasn’t offended by it. Even at that young age I understood that people couldn’t help themselves. He said, ‘Did your father make a pastry cook of you yet, Nellie?’

I said, ‘No sir. Papi says I have baker’s hands. Too warm for pastry.’

Papi pinched my arm. When Royalties address you, you’re supposed to reply succinctly and then shut up, but I suppose I thought I should never meet the Prince of Wales again so I might as well say all I wanted.

I said, ‘I can balance a ledger though, and write stories.’

‘Can you, by Jupiter! What kind of stories? Do they have battles in them and adventures?’

‘Only adventures, sir, not battles, because I don’t really know how a battle goes.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘never mind. An adventure story can be a jolly fine thing.’

He looked at me directly and steadily then. It takes most people longer. Some never manage it.

So I said, ‘I was born this way, sir.’

Better to say it and be done. I was in trouble anyway.

‘Splendid girl,’ he said, very, very quietly. Which fills me up just to think of it. I believe I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I was ever called ‘splendid’.

He had begun to walk away when he asked my age and Papi rushed in, trying to save me from myself.

‘Only tvelf, Highness. Still a child.’

But I sensed I didn’t need saving. I spoke up and said I was nearly thirteen. And the Prince said the King wished Princess Sofia to have a playfellow, an ordinary girl with good sense and a cheerful spirit. Papi read his master very well. He saw the Prince was taken with me and seized the moment. He assured him I had cheerfulness and good sense in buckets, that I knew my place—which was wishful thinking—and sang tolerably well, which was a downright lie. Also, that I had been inoculated against the smallpox.

The Prince said, ‘Then she might do very well. I shall propose her to their Majesties. She might go to Kew. Now sir, I have a great longing for a smoked herring.’

I had no idea what or where Kew was but Papi, suddenly rather delighted with me, explained. Kew was a village, across the river from Chiswick and more remote even than Hammersmith. Their Majesties had a palace there with gardens and a menagerie of animals from Africa and India, and the younger princesses lived there in the summer with their governesses. Princess Sofia was one of the Prince of Wales’s very many sisters and she was, as near as Papi could remember, a year or two younger than me. He was excited, I could tell. He drummed his fingers, the way he did when he was about to make a good bargain, and he told an under-cook to coddle me two fresh eggs. The matter of my forgetting to be Cornelia was never mentioned and after a week of sea air he escorted me back to London like a trophy. I was a splendid girl, endowed with good sense and a cheerful spirit. The Prince of Wales had as good as said so.

Weeks passed and no word came from Kew. It had evidently been decided that a girl named like a carthorse was unsuitable company for a princess and I had no one to blame but myself. I’d looked forward to seeing a real tiger, not to say a real princess too, and I’d looked forward to eating my fill at royal banquets, but my disappointment faded. I’d been warned often enough not to expect too much of life. Mother set me the task of sorting her button box and reading to her from Belmont und Constanza. Then, at the end of August, I was summoned. I was to attend a garden tea party and stay one night at Kew Palace.