It was as though a great emergency had been declared. Everyone went to their post. Mother summoned her war cabinet of Miss Tod, Mrs Romilly and Mrs Lavelle, and it was decided that as I was to be the guest of Princess Sofia I must wear watered silk at the very least. Papi said I was not a guest but a possible future companion, and that the princesses lived very simply so I must in no wise outshine them. Guest or companion, for a whole week I was the household’s best darling. Twyvil fed me the top of the milk, Susan our Necessary Maid did the best she could with sugar water and coaxed my hair into half-hearted curls, and Mother denounced Papi as the meanest old geizhals that ever came out of Brunswick. But Papi was our Commander-in-Chief because there was no gainsaying he knew the best way to go on around the Royalties. I went to Kew dressed in plain cotton lawn.

2

When the great day came Mother had a watery flux brought on by the strain of the preparations and Papi was called away urgently to Carlton House where a hog, bought for roasting, had turned green. I travelled to Kew in the gig with only Morphew for company. Morphew was our general outdoors man, trusted to lock the street door when Papi was away at night. He was also our footman, coachman, and the only member of the household who could master the Beast, our sly, biting, kicking grey. There was a cantankerous streak to Morphew too—I suppose the Beast recognized it had met its match—but he was honest, he worked hard, and he seemed to have no one in the world except us so employing him gave Mother an agreeable flush of benevolence with very little effort on her part.

I remember feeling relieved about the arrangements for my journey to Kew. Travel terrified Mother and I was glad to be spared two hours of her vapours. I had my own reasons to be nervous but I was distracted from them by two of Morphew’s peculiarities. First, there was the yellow horsehair wig he insisted on wearing no matter how many times he was offered a superior substitute. Morphew’s wig appeared to have a life of its own. It was always on the move, one minute on the back of his head, the next sunk down low over one eyebrow. I would sometimes play a little game, closing my eyes for a count of one hundred and guessing where the wig would be when I looked again. Better yet, Morphew could read tolerably well, and he provided a continuous narration of our journey.

‘William Wilking, supplier of anchors. I knew a Bill Wilking years back, worked for a maltster in Southwark but I heard he drownded, so that won’t be him. Fresh Mackerel. Ha! Fresh when they put the notice out. I wouldn’t trust a mackerel if I harn’t seen it caught. Merritt’s Wholesale Spermaceti. That worn’t there last time I come along this way. That used to be Joan Badger’s. Hams and Tongues Cured. I love a good pickled tongue. Wholesale spermaceti, though, they say that’s a profitable line to be in. Now Miss Nellie, do you look to your left you’ll observe the Turk’s Head alehouse, as used to be the Greyhound and afore that it was the Two Magpies …’

A blind man could have travelled with Morphew and missed very little of the passing sights.

They were building a new bridge across the Thames at Chiswick. It ran close alongside the old one and by the time we got to the Surrey side I was all dust from the stone-cutting. Morphew kindly stopped the gig at the pump on Kew Green and wetted a handkerchief to wipe my face. He tried to put my mind at rest too, that I shouldn’t be nervous about meeting Princess Sofia or any other royal person. His argument ran something like this:

‘They only chance to be royals, see? On account of their hangcestors. If you was to follow it back, all they did was help theirselves to a passel of land. Worn’t theirn to start with, was it? Third day God made the dry land but He didn’t say “this passel is for Hanover and this one’s for Stuart”, did He? No. They just come along and took it. Then this one married that one, or they might start a bit of a war. And all the time they’re clambering higher and setting up as kings because they’ve got the land. As was made for all of us. In the Beginning. But they’re hoomans, same as me and you. They might have thrones under them but they’re still sitting on their rumps, if you’ll pardon my language. And that’s all you need to remember.’

I felt much better after that. Papi had reassured me too, though he had been more specific about why I had no reason to be anxious. Only the three youngest princesses were in residence at Kew: Mary, Sophia and Amelia. The King and Queen were gone into Worcestershire to take the Malvern waters and the elder princesses with them. Nevertheless I had committed to memory all the names of that enormous family, even the brothers, though at the time it seemed unlikely I ever should meet any of them. Their lives were like chalk and cheese, for the princes were never at home and the princesses rarely left it.

The eldest I had already seen. George, Prince of Wales, with the pretty curls and the perfumed handkerchief. After him came Frederick, Duke of York, who was a soldier, and Prince William that they called ‘Billy’. He was on the high seas, commander of a frigate in the King’s Navy. Next came the eldest of the princesses, whose name was Charlotte but never was called anything but ‘Royal’, and after her Augusta and Elizabeth, but with Prince Edward somewhere in between. I never was quite sure where he fitted in but as he was away in foreign parts I didn’t trouble myself to find it out. Prince Ernest was the next, then Augustus and Adolphus, who was called Dolly and still is. Then there was Mary that was called Minny, and Sophia that was called Sofy. There had been two more princes born after Sofy: Octavius and Alfred, but they had both died. Princess Amelia was the last, the youngest of fifteen children.

A king needs an heir or two, certainly, and some daughters to be his consolation, but why so many? Miss Tod had a theory which she shared with me in later years. The King’s stubborn fidelity was to blame. If only he had taken lovers like any normal monarch, the poor Queen might have been spared twenty years of relentless childbed.

Morphew set me down outside a square red house. Two unsmiling little faces watched me from a downstairs window and a plain, brisk young woman came out to meet me. She was Miss Gouldsworthy, an under-governess. For two pins I’d have jumped back into the gig and begged Morphew to drive me home. At the time it didn’t occur to me that Princess Sofy might be as apprehensive as I was. The King had said she should have a Humble Companion and one had been chosen for her, but she had no idea what she might be getting. And as she told me, long after, Amelia had played on her nerves all morning, predicting I would be barefoot and not know my letters. So Sofy was beside herself with joy when she saw I wore shoes. There was, though, the no small matter of the mark on my face. But princesses are trained from the cradle to master themselves, to appear serene and resolute no matter what they are thinking. After the first shocked flicker of her eyes Sofy was warm and welcoming.

I remember saying, ‘Didn’t they tell you?’

And she just took my hand.

There was a difference of six years between Sofy and Amelia, and for several days they had been reduced to each other’s company because Princess Minny was confined to bed with an abscess of the shoulder. Little wonder Sofy was so glad to see me.

My diary entry, made on my return to London, makes me blush now at its priggishness:

September 10th 1788

P. Sofy has light brown hair and big grey eyes like the P. of Wales. She has hardly any books & plays with a doll’s cradle v. inferior to the one I had. I suggested we dress in bed sheets and act out scenes but Sofy is qte cowed by the governesses and said she was sure we were not permitted to unmake beds. P. Amelia is a brattish child but v. pretty.

In those days I imagined princesses had to be pretty, that if they weren’t they’d be locked away in a dungeon. Amelia was horribly fascinated by me, following us around. Sofy told her not to stare.

I said, ‘I don’t mind stares. I’m accustomed to it.’

Amelia said, ‘Then I’m very sorry for you. I’m sure I couldn’t bear it. I suppose you’re very, very poor too?’

And bearing in mind Morphew’s revelation that Royalties were merely ‘hooman’ and I shouldn’t be intimidated by them I told her I was certainly not very, very poor. We had two drawing rooms at home and my father kept his own berlin.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I think you are poor but you don’t know it. You’re the daughter of a cook and we have to treat you kindly. Gouly said so.’

Gouly was their name for Miss Gouldsworthy. She was spinsterish, and as blank a page as any royal servant does well to be. I see now that her rank was uncomfortably middling. She had some authority—over music tutors and drawing masters and dressers and housemaids—but she was overseen by Peggy Planta, the principal governess, and by Lady Finch, whose word was law whenever the Queen was absent and sometimes even when she wasn’t.

Before I left home I’d received any amount of direction concerning my comportment at Kew, in particular not to plunge in with every remark that came into my head, but rather to watch and learn. Fine counsel indeed from my mother, who was rarely so selfish as to keep a thought to herself and it was, anyway, advice I hardly needed. My natural preference has always been to listen. But Amelia’s error was so great it had to be corrected.

I said, ‘My father isn’t a cook. He’s Comptroller to the Prince of Wales.’

Sofy said, ‘Don’t mind Amelia. She’s a very little girl.’

And Amelia declared that she would be five next week and she hoped that if she was ever obliged to have a Humble Companion it would be someone more agreeable than me.

Several questions troubled me during me those first few hours at Kew. I wondered what house I was in and when the coach would come to take us to Kew Palace. There was also the promised tea party. My stomach was growling in anticipation of royal cakes, but I saw no sign of any preparations. Then the rain began.

I said, ‘What about the garden party? It’ll be ruined.’ Sofy said, ‘Not at all. We can have it in the schoolroom,’ and she set about arranging cups of water and plates of torn paper for their dolls. We had nothing to eat till dinner was served at five o’clock: plain broth, cold meats and soft, year-old Worcester apples. Then we were obliged to be usefully occupied until bedtime. Amelia threaded beads and Sofy embroidered a tray cloth while Mademoiselle Montmollin read to them in French, and Gouly asked them questions to see that they had paid attention and understood what they’d heard. I had no sewing and I understood no French, though I knew the sound of it well. On Dean Street you were as likely to hear it as you were to hear English. Amelia seized on my lack of French as further evidence of my poverty.

I said, ‘I know German.’

‘Oh, so do we,’ she said. ‘Everyone knows German.’ Sofy said, ‘I expect Nellie forgot to bring her sewing.’

The truth was, Nellie wasn’t gifted with a needle, for no matter how much Nellie was rapped across her knuckles she still favoured her left hand, which as every sensible person knows is the Devil’s hand. So Nellie spoke up, before something was found for her from the mending bag. I said that I preferred not to sew because it reminded me of my dead sister and Miss Gouly replied that industry was a better cure for grief than sentimental moping and it was a terrible thing if I was allowed to sit idle at home.

I said, ‘I don’t sit idle. I run important errands and help my Papi with his receipt books and I read to my mother every night.’

I might have added that I was only obliged to read to Mother till her head drooped, and if it was a book I didn’t care for I’d read it in a slow, droning fashion so that sleep would overtake her quickly. As soon as she began to snuffle I was free to creep away to the morning room and hide there, writing my own stories until my candle was spent.

The hours passed and no carriage came to take us away. The sky was still light when Gouly instructed us to wash our faces and put on our nightgowns. Sofy and I shared a bed in Amelia’s room so that Princess Minny shouldn’t be disturbed. The news from the sickroom was that she was still in much pain in spite of being cupped but bore it as bravely as ever. By all accounts Princess Minny was a saint as well as a great beauty.

I waited until Amelia was asleep before I dared to ask Sofy my most urgent question: was this really a royal palace?

She said, ‘I think so. It’s called Kew Palace. Why do you ask?’

I said, ‘Because it’s just a house. I think it should be bigger, don’t you, to be called a palace?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s quite big enough for us, don’t you think?’

I tried a different approach and suggested it didn’t seem quite royal enough for a king.

‘Oh I see,’ she said. ‘But the King and Queen don’t live here. When they come to Kew they stay in the white house, across the lawn. Royal and Augusta and Elizabeth stay there too. Then Lady Finch has a place on Ferry Lane, and there are plenty of houses on the green for the princes to live in if they ever come, so we really manage very well.’

I didn’t want to appear boastful but I could have told her that my family’s house was much better appointed than Kew. Our windows didn’t rattle. We had well-stuffed chairs and a new flushing water closet, and fruit tarts at teatime every day if we wanted them. I tried to let her down lightly.

I said, ‘I suppose there may be different kinds of palace. I saw the Prince of Wales’s house at Brighton and it was nothing like this.’

‘Oh, tell about it,’ she begged. ‘Only whisper, because if Amelia hears you she’s sure to blabber and the King dislikes talk about the Prince’s houses. They cost a very great deal of money.’

‘Yes, and some of it borrowed from my father,’ I might have said.

Sofy was enthralled by my account of the Marine Pavilion, especially the card room with its scarlet walls and the maraschino cherries that were dipped in chocolate and set in little dishes here and there. She said she’d like to see it for herself but would never be allowed.

I said, ‘When you’re of age you can. Then you may go anywhere you please.’

‘No, Nellie,’ she said, ‘you’re mistaken. Not if the King doesn’t wish it.’

That was my first lesson regarding Sofy’s lot. She could only do what the King permitted. She had to live in bleak houses, eat yesterday’s mutton, and wait for a German cousin to offer her marriage, but only after four of her sisters had been suited before her.