Jack said, ‘If Boney lands you and your Royalties’ll be for it.’
I said, ‘If Boney lands so will you.’
Weymouth was full of troops. Beacons had been set up at Blackdown and Ridgeway Hill and Sutton to test the town’s readiness for an invasion, though we were given warning of it, for the sake of Her Majesty’s nerves. At ten o’clock a single shot was fired. We balanced on stools and crowded to our tiny window. We could see lanterns signalling from the rigging of the Southampton. There were answering shots from the cannon at the shore battery, and soon after we heard the sound of the Town Militia marching past and then the cavalry of the Light Dragoons. It was rather thrilling. By midnight all was quiet again and Weymouth slept. It was said that many useful lessons had been learned from the alert.
I felt no apprehension and neither did Sofy.
She said, ‘If it comes to it and there’s fighting you and I will put on aprons, Nellie, and go out to tend the wounded.’ Minny said heaven help the wounded and we had better practise our bandaging. Amelia said Sofy would never be allowed, that if the French landed any Englishwoman found in the street was likely to be ravished and then put to the sword. Sofy said she was willing to consider anything to escape playing basset with the Queen every evening and was quite ready to be put to the sword, as long as she was ravished thoroughly first.
For two weeks our lives ran in their customary grooves. The King bathed and rode, the Queen walked slowly along the Esplanade and we visited shops, examined hats and lengths of cotton and tabby and bought nothing. The change, the crisis, came on suddenly. One evening we went to the play and the King talked through it so loudly we couldn’t make out a word. It was no loss—to my recollection we had already seen The Lying Valet three times—but the King’s behaviour was alarming.
He said he must have congress with a woman or he’d go off like a firecracker and if Her Majesty wouldn’t do her duty he’d install Lady Herbert at Windsor and if she wouldn’t cure his needs Lady Buckley would do just as well. Wraxhall and Price were the equerries that evening. They tried first to persuade the King to retire and when that failed Wraxhall had the carriages brought round so that the Queen and the Princesses could be spared any further embarrassment. I was the last to leave the box and the King caught at my hand and pulled me towards him. His breath was foul.
He said, ‘You see how things are. Look at my breeches. I stand like a crocus and no one will give me relief, relief, relief.’ Major Price broke the King’s grip on me and hissed at me to go quickly. In our carriage no one spoke. When we arrived at Gloucester Lodge the Queen had already gone to her rooms and Augusta and Elizabeth to theirs.
Minny said, ‘It’s beginning again. I knew it. I saw this afternoon that his spirits were running too fast.’
We lived for two days in a state of high nervousness till Dr Willis could come. The Queen stayed in her apartments while the King paced about wherever he pleased. His colour was livid and his belly strained against the buttons of his weskit. Day and night he talked without a break. One minute he must go immediately to Lord Poulett’s for he’d promised to ride out with his pack of harriers. But then he remembered Lord Poulett didn’t expect him for two more weeks at the earliest and might not be at home. No, indeed Hanover was where he must go, to inspect his beloved city. Major Price was given the thankless job of telling his king that Hanover was lost to the French and had been for more than a year. I quaked at the thought of encountering him—no hiding place was safe and there was no predicting what he might say. His mind leapfrogged from one topic to another. Dancing lessons for his darling granddaughter; the length of yarn that can be spun from a pound of merino wool; the perfection of Lady Yarmouth’s breasts.
The opportunity to escape from Gloucester Lodge for a few hours should have been welcome. But our destination was to be Piddletown. Sofy planned to go to Ilsington House to see her son. Then she remembered my reluctance.
She said, ‘You’re not still cross with me about your ardent admirer? Well I solemnly promise not to send you to the stables this time. I daresay Ebenezer Huddlestone or whatever his name is has forgotten you by now.’
I said, ‘Nevertheless I prefer not to go.’
And there I thought it rested. Days passed and no carriage was ordered. The King’s fever continued and his daughters were pulled two ways. They didn’t want to see him or hear him, but they feared to leave him.
Then one morning Sofy said, ‘Nellie, you’re going to be so surprised. Garth is bringing Tommy to Weymouth today. I arranged it all myself, to make amends for teasing you about your admirer. Aren’t you vastly impressed?’
I did my best to appear so.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘you might praise me a little more for being so considerate.’
I said, ‘You’re very good. But I wonder how it’s to be managed, a small child coming here. What about the Majesties?’
‘Oh, but it’s all very easily arranged,’ she said. ‘The King is confined to his rooms and the Queen is going to visit Lady Digby.’
Garth came at noon. Tommy’s governess, Miss Wellbeloved, was a slight, nervous woman and Tommy had complete dominion over her. I found I could not like him. He was four years old and far too pleased with himself. The visit was mercifully short, no more than an hour, so I was spared much conversation with Garth. He was as cordial as ever, told me about a plantation of Scotch firs he had made at Ilsington House, about new words Milady had learned, and about Tommy’s riding lessons.
‘The best seat I’ve ever seen on a child so young,’ he said. ‘Remarkable.’
I responded politely. I couldn’t do more.
He said, ‘Are you quite well today, Nellie?’ He seemed to be searching my face.
‘I am, thank you,’ I said. ‘Very well.’
Before he left he and Sofy circled the garden, deep in conversation. I tried not to watch them but even Tommy’s boisterous antics and Miss Wellbeloved’s comical attempts at correcting him couldn’t distract me. It was the briefest visit but I felt it would never end.
Sofy said, ‘Garth fears he’s offended you in some way.’
I said, ‘How could that possibly be?’
‘Exactly what I said. I told him you might be pensive, seeing Tommy, because you have no child of your own.’
She twittered on, about the blueness of Tommy’s eyes and the soundness of his teeth.
Then she said, ‘Nellie, there’s something I must tell you.’ My heart lurches recounting it, even now, knowing what I know.
I said, ‘You’re going to marry Garth after all.’
‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘Why do you harp on that so? No, this concerns you. It concerns your admirer. He’s not in Garth’s service any more. He volunteered for a trooper in the Light Dragoons.’
I said, ‘Good. Then he did the right thing.’
‘They were sent to Egypt,’ she said. ‘And Mrs Chaffey’s nephew—you remember Garth’s housekeeper Mrs Chaffey?—he went too and when he came back he told Garth that his groom had been killed in a skirmish and wouldn’t be resuming his position. So he’s gone, do you see? I’m sorry.’
‘He was never anything to me. It was you who made a romance of it, but there was none. It was all of your imagining. How did Garth happen to speak of it?’
‘It came out quite naturally,’ she said. ‘He’d remarked you were very cool with him today so I told him how you hadn’t wanted to go to Piddletown, because of my silly meddling. Did I do wrong?’
‘It doesn’t matter. None of it matters.’
‘And you’re not heartbroken about the groom?’
‘No. I’m sorry for him and for all those other young men who won’t come home. They’re each of them someone’s son, someone’s sister. But I’m certainly not heartbroken.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Then you’ll come with me to Ryal’s. I want to buy a drum and fife for my darling little soldier.’
Gradually the King’s delirium abated. He slept more, talked less, and took a little gruel. His doctors believed he’d soon be well enough to shift to Windsor, and on the day I left to return to London a train of wagons was being loaded with trunks and coffers. The royal household moved like an elderly tortoise.
Sofy said, ‘I hate to let you go. I hope I may see you before our next Weymouth season.’
But I was done with Weymouth seasons, though I didn’t realize it at the time. It was a crystal-clear morning. There were two frigates at anchor in the bay and ships under sail in the offing—to my eye large enough to be third or second raters though I was no great student of the Navy—and on the Esplanade a picket of infantrymen stood guard. That was my last view of Weymouth.
21
Coming home from the royal hen house was always a shock. At Seymour Street I was the only female. The laundress came three times in a month and we shared a housemaid with the Cutlers who lived next door. Esther lived with them but she came in to us every morning at 5.30 to light the fires and bring Jack’s shaving water. I did my own cooking and Morphew and Henry Topham did everything else, running between the house and the shop.
I told Jack my plan. I wanted to take in a foundling girl, the way he had taken in Ambrose.
He said, ‘What for? If it’s for the sewing get a day woman, or put it out to Miss Tod.’
I said, ‘I don’t mean a girl to be a servant. It would be someone to help me, but only in the way a daughter would.’
He didn’t like that.
He said, ‘She’ll be no daughter of mine. Some gin-souse’s bastard.’
