It was a subject close to my heart. Through Jack’s hard work and our strict limit to the size of ‘brought forwards’, especially those of the grander addresses, the Pink Lemon was turning a profit. There was talk that we would soon be in a position to marry.
I didn’t quite love Jack but I had grown to appreciate his steadiness and his quiet ways. But I liked my life too, my little room at Miss Tod’s, and my freedom. If Jack said, ‘Come at nine’ and I wanted time to write, I could say Miss Tod needed me till ten. If Miss Tod said she was depending on me to make up a four for whist I could plead ices to be stirred for a ball supper. I knew, though, we couldn’t continue that way for ever and I took some comfort that marrying had not prevented Miss Burney from publishing a new novel. It was the promise of seeing her that made me determined to go to Windsor that summer.
Jack said, ‘I wish you’d give them notice, Nellie. Tell them you’re soon to be wed and you can’t be spared. It was a bad day’s work when your father put you up for that position.’
I said, ‘Some day Sofy will marry. She’ll be carried off to some little kingdom on the Rhine and I’ll never see her again. But as long as she’s kept at home I can’t deny her my company. You don’t know how dull her life is.’
‘My heart bleeds for her,’ he said, but still, he accepted my going. For all his growling about Sofy he was in a happy frame of mind on two counts. First, the tenants in the rooms above the shop talked of quitting. Secondly, he’d found a boy to be his apprentice and learn the sugar work. Ambrose Kersie. He was to sleep on a truckle bed in the dry store until we moved upstairs.
Ambrose was an orphan boy. He’d been left at the Foundling Hospital in January of ’84, a month old as near as they could say, and they’d named him for the strip of grey kersie his mother had pinned to his nightshirt in case she should come to claim him. But she never did. He was small for thirteen, very quiet and cautious but in good health. He didn’t show any great enthusiasm or gratitude for being apprenticed to a master confectioner of Oxford Street. He just followed Jack’s orders and kept his thoughts to himself. In a way they were all he had. He came to us without even a locking box.
I asked him if he could read. ‘Some,’ he said.
I said, ‘Would you like to learn?’
‘Don’t mind,’ he said.
That was Ambrose. You’d have thought he was being charged by the word.
I travelled to Windsor on the Oxford coach, and as the weather was set fair I rode on the rumble to save money. I see from my diary that I found the Royalties in a state of discreet civil war:
May 14th 1796
Wales and his princess have given up all pretence of living together and the battle lines are drawn. The King refuses to take sides and Lady Jersey has retired to the country so the Prince has lost his deadliest weapon, but when the troops are counted he still has the advantage. Princess Caroline is apparently such an incurable flirt and such an irremediable slattern that only Billy Clarence and Sofy speak up in her defence.
The prevailing view was that everyone had done their best with Caroline, that all she had needed to do was follow the example of the Queen but she defiantly would not. The fact that the Prince of Wales hadn’t followed the example of the King was held to be of no account. Sofy’s chief concern was for the baby.
‘What if Caroline takes her away?’ she said. ‘What if she feels so unwelcome here she goes back to Brunswick and takes the little darling with her?’
Minny said, ‘Don’t be a goose. Charlotte isn’t hers to take away. Charlotte belongs to England. And if Caroline doesn’t mend her ways I shouldn’t wonder if the King doesn’t take the baby from her and bring her to us, to be properly raised.’
I said, ‘But surely, a child should be with its mother?’
Amelia said, ‘No, Nellie. That may be the way with your kind of people but for us it’s not at all the case.’
And Minny said, ‘It’s true. The Duke of Württemburg’s children have grown up without their mother and Royal hears that they do very well.’
The Princess Royal’s betrothal to Fritz was all but sealed. The only impediment to an early wedding was the war. The King wouldn’t allow her to travel until she was guaranteed a safe passage. She seemed not to mind the wait. She was fatter than ever and a martyr to her liver but she had landed a husband and so had cleared the way for her sisters to do the same. Miss Burney, who was now Madame D’Arblay, came to tea at Frogmore and we all attended. She was quite unchanged but I think she would not have known me, had it not been for my mark.
‘Cornelia Welche,’ she said, ‘you’re all grown up. I forget how time passes.’
I had bought a copy of Camilla for her to sign.
She said, ‘And you still write? Of course you do. How could you not when there is so much to observe?’
One eyebrow discreetly raised in the direction of the Royalties.
I said, ‘Your husband doesn’t mind the time your writing takes?’
‘He doesn’t. He’s a sensible man and not over careful of his dignity. Camilla has bought us a house. And are you married too?’
‘Soon. Jack’s in business and I have to help him. I do write, but every time the shop bell rings I have to leave off.’
‘Ah yes,’ she said. ‘And then there will be children. I have a son now, you know. And I must say he’s a greatly superior creation to any of my books.’
She signed my book To Cornelia, a fellow scribbler. Then she appended the words, between each clanging of the shop bell. I wanted to ask her more. Did she rework what she wrote, over and over until it was a mess or did she play with it in her mind first so it came from her pen clean and perfect? Did she throw away more than she kept? But I lost my chance. Princess Elizabeth interrupted us, very full of herself because she’d had some of her designs engraved and published, to illustrate a little book of verse. They were pretty enough, but unremarkable. I’m sure it had only been published to flatter her because she was royalty.
Amelia said, ‘Poor Burney. She looked quite strained.’
I said, ‘I thought she looked very well. And she’s certainly very happy.’
Sofy said, ‘Nellie was always very thick with her so we must allow her to judge.’
Amelia said, ‘But Sofy, they say she has to live on practically nothing a year.’
I said, ‘Many people do, Amelia.’
She gave me one of her Royal Highness looks that they were all capable of pulling from their sleeve.
Sofy said, ‘Well I think it’s very romantic. An old maid who must have given up all hope of a husband. D’Arblay’s a soldier, you know, and an exile, and Burney’s father so disapproved he wouldn’t attend the wedding, but she married anyway. Imagine.’
It was the day before I was due to return to London and we were walking in the Great Park, all the Princesses except Royal who was required by the Queen. It was an unsatisfactory outing because Elizabeth liked to stop and examine every twig and leaf and Augusta preferred to stride out briskly. There was still a mist hanging low over the grass and we were all wrapped in our wool cloaks. I imagine we looked like a slow moving herd of sheep.
Amelia stopped suddenly and cried, ‘Lord, look who’s coming! It’s the hobgoblin.’
Tom Garth was riding towards us, the first time I had seen him in four years. I felt composed. The business of Enoch Heppenstall had cured me of a deal of nonsense. ‘Well,’ I thought, ‘this will go easily enough. He has five princesses to attend. He may not even remember my name.’
But he did remember me. He dismounted and walked ahead with Augusta, which I found I minded more than I should. But then he paused while the rest of us caught up, and because Amelia clung to Sofy and made her weave this way and that so as not to have to talk to Garth, he saw I was alone. He fell in beside me and stayed there until we reached Lower Lodge.
