Yr Sofy

The Outcast was the new title of my novel, insisted upon by Mr Crosby who said The Blessed sounded like a theological work, and anyway it was his experience that the public bought books that promised drama.

‘Injustices done, revenge, triumph, you know the kind of thing,’ he said.

Miss Tod was the first to read it and declared it a masterpiece. Morphew read it slowly and in secret. He knew Jack’s opinion of my scribbling and he wanted to keep a roof over his head.

When he was done he said, ‘That’s a miracle, Miss Nellie, and I’ll quote you why. All them words, strung together so perfeck, and after Mr Jack firebacked it that time too. I don’t know how you done it. Mr Welche would have been proud of you. He’d have danced a jig and that’s a fact. And as for Mr Jack he oughter be proud of you too but he’s stubborn as a molly mule.’

Jack didn’t trouble me. I had my published book in my hand and my mind was on what I’d write next. But anyway, I was telling about Princess Minny’s husband.

Silly Billy, the Duke of Gloucester, was Minny’s cousin, but no ordinary cousin. He was of regrettable descent. His mother had been someone’s natural daughter, his grandmother had been a milliner. He couldn’t be denied his title, but the distinction had always been made and he and his sisters were kept at arm’s length from the Royal Highnesses. Perhaps that was the reason he had such an inflated opinion of himself. He kept state like a Crown Prince.

The wedding took place in the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace. Sofy said, ‘Minny was very quiet at dinner. I think she began to have some doubts though she never admitted to them. She said she was far too old for quantities of lace so her gown was very plain, but she carried it off. She looked quite beautiful. But it wasn’t the gayest of days, thanks to certain brothers. Did you ever know such a quarrelsome family?’

Ernie Cumberland had stayed away from Minny’s wedding. He refused to go where his wife wouldn’t be received, and anyway he loathed Gloucester. The Prince Regent had attended, but begrudgingly. Being an outsider himself Gloucester had naturally sided with Caroline in the war of the Waleses. This unforgivable offence prevented the Regent from graciously walking his sister to the altar so Minny had gone to her voluntary fate with Dolly Cambridge on one side of her and Billy Clarence on the other.

Sofy said, ‘Clarence was very tearful. His Mrs Jordan died, you know. He’s taken it very hard.’

Crocodile tears. He was the one who had cast her into exile. We didn’t know it then but Dora Jordan had died, all alone in the world, and been buried by kindly neighbours. She’d beggared herself supporting all those children she had of Billy Clarence, and not one of them was at her side when she died.

I’d say Gloucester did well to get Minny. She was still handsome at forty. How well she had done was open to argument. True, she’d broken free of Windsor and would be mistress of her own establishment at Bagshot Park, but at a price. Her husband was dull and conceited and his only interest in life was shooting.

‘And the house!’ Sofy said. ‘You can’t imagine. It should be pulled down. The roofs leak and there really isn’t one good drawing room. Gloucester might do less preening in other people’s houses and put his own in better order. I predict Minny will come to town as often as she can, to get away from him and away from those shabby apartments.’

The honeymoon was very soon over. Minny and Gloucester became like the man and woman in the weather house. When he was at Bagshot she was in London, when he had business in town she hurried back to Surrey, or visited her sisters. Marriage had put Windsor in a different light. Now she was free to come and go, now she was no longer absolutely bound to sit with the Queen, she was surprised that those who were obliged found it so wearisome. Such sudden failures of memory and imagination are not unheard of.

Minny wasn’t the only one with a short memory and a sudden surfeit of opinions. In far away Württemburg Royal’s husband died. The cause of his death wasn’t made clear and we could only surmise: sat on a pin and burst. But Royal began to fill her widowed days composing letters of advice. ‘Augusta and Elizabeth should take on some of the Queen’s drawing rooms,’ she wrote. ‘I’m greatly surprised Her Majesty’s physician hasn’t recommended it, and you might think of taking a turn yourself, Sofy, as soon as your spasms recede. Inactivity is the friend of ill-health, you know.’

Sofy was furious. She said, ‘All very well for her, sitting in her dower house giving orders. Let her come and do the drawing rooms. I can’t think she has anything to keep her in Württemburg.’

The word ‘inactivity’ goaded her though. So when I told her about the new bazaar John Trotter had opened on Soho Square and when Minny said she would like to see it, Sofy rose from her day bed and declared she’d a mind to go with us. We had been friends for twenty-eight years and it was the first time she had agreed to step into my world.

I knew Mr Trotter from my childhood. He had been a neighbour and a man after Papi’s heart, indeed they had had some business together in the matter of army stockings and laundry soap. When Papi and Mother moved to Hammersmith Trotter had taken our house as his residence and used his old accommodations as a warehouse. The rooms had been filled with army greatcoats and haversacks and water canteens and harness leather. Those long years of war had made Trotter a rich man. Now, he said, he intended to give back a little of what he’d received. He opened up his old warehouse for small traders to sell their goods. War widows, he said, could rent a stall ‘very reasonable’ and sell items they made at home—baked goods, embroidery, beadwork. It would give them independence, he said, and dignity.

‘And put rent in his pocket,’ Morphew sniffed. ‘Do he mean to help war widows he oughter give them a bit of jingle and be done.’

But Trotter had plenty of takers for his stalls. Not all were poor widows by any means and those that tried their hand at shopkeeping found they liked it. The bazaar was a busy, friendly place and there was money to be made. Miss Tod was one of the first to secure a small stand.

Sofy was all a-tremble at the prospect of walking about the streets of London.

She said, ‘What if we’re recognized?’

Minny said, ‘Two old dames, shopping for notions? Believe me, Sofy, no one will look at us.’

Anyway, they both wore such deep coal-scuttle bonnets their faces were quite hidden. Only Miss Tod guessed who my companions were and she tied herself in knots to keep the secret, casting her eyes down and pinching herself not to curtsey. Minny bought an Indian shawl, a pair of mother-of-pearl hair combs and a beaded sovereign purse. Sofy bought a paste brooch for herself, a child’s gingham parasol for my little Annie and an embroidered cap for the baby Princess Charlotte was expecting. Minny was against buying the baby bonnet. She said it was one thing to sew garments at home but it tempted fate to buy clothes for an unborn child. And indeed Charlotte miscarried and then again, later in the year. Sofy was so enjoying herself she forgot to be an invalid.

We walked from Soho Square to the Pink Lemon, where Minny bought cinnamon jumbals, Sofy bought chocolate drops and Henry wrapped them in two perfect tissue paper packages. Morphew peered open-mouthed through the curtain behind the shop counter.

Only Jack stayed stubbornly out of sight, ‘loading a drying cabinet with candied-orange flowers’, Henry said. A delicate operation that couldn’t be hurried and served my husband very well in his determination not to bow his head to any Royalties.

Minny’s carriage followed us to Seymour Street. Sal made tea, Annie paraded up and down with her new parasol and Sofy declared she had seen and done so much she was sure she wouldn’t sleep that night. As soon as Morphew had done his deliveries he hurried home to tell Uncle Christoff about the royal patronage of our shop, only to discover that my uncle could trump him. He had taken tea and cake with the Princesses. He had reminisced with Princess Minny about the time he’d worked in the old Duke of Gloucester’s establishment, a young man not long out of Hanover and still learning to speak English.

When Jack came home he said nothing.

Uncle Christoff said, ‘Royal Highnesses eh, Jack? That’ll help trade, when word gets around.’

Jack said, ‘My trade doesn’t need any help.’

I said, ‘Why must you be so stiff-necked? Why wouldn’t you come out and be presented?’

‘I was busy,’ he said. ‘And anyway, enough we’ve got one in the family dancing to their tune.’

Henry said, ‘Still, Jack, it’d be a nice thing for us if they came in regular. Very pleasant ladies. And they paid on the nail. They never asked for credit.’

Jack said, ‘Don’t be fooled, lad. Some folk lull you with cash a time or two. Then they start taking liberties.’

Morphew said, ‘They didn’t look like Highnesses at all. Plain wool coats. You never would of thought. And when they was taking their leave one of them, the one with the barnacle bins on her nose, she gave me such a sweet smile.’

I said, ‘That was Princess Sophia.’

‘Princess Sophia,’ he said. ‘Well, that’ll be something to treasure.’

I said, ‘But never forget, Morphew, they’re only hooman.’

27

After two infants had miscarried, Princess Charlotte’s third pregnancy went well. The baby quickened, Charlotte was active and healthy and the Princess of Wales threatened to return to England before December to be with her daughter for the lying-in. On the afternoon of November 7th I received a letter, express from Sofy. The child, a boy, had been stillborn and Charlotte had survived him by only a few hours. She was twenty-one years old.

We hardly know what to do with ourselves. It is difficult to understand how things went so badly wrong. You know Leopold is the most considerate of husbands and I’m sure would have made no demands on Charlotte. She was purged every day, as recommended, and had blood taken every two weeks. Her pains began on Monday after dinner and by Tuesday morning the Lord Chancellor and the Archbishop had been sent for, so we believed the birth must be imminent. But then her pains lessened and Dr Croft and Dr Baillie consulted another accoucheur, to have his opinion of the case. The baby boy wasn’t delivered until Wednesday evening. He never breathed. Dr Baillie says Charlotte bore up very cheerfully, under the circumstances. She took some tea and slept a little but was light-headed when she woke and then became very restless. I don’t know what was given her except camphor and then some laudanum. Every account we hear is different. The only certain thing is that she suffered a great convulsion and died at about two of the morning. Augusta woke me with the news. She, poor dear, hadn’t slept. She said she had the strongest premonition of something bad.

The Queen was away at Bath with Billy Clarence and Elizabeth. We expect them at Windsor tonight. Leopold is apparently very calm, as though he is sleepwalking. Our Prince Regent though is prostrate. He was in Suffolk when he received word that Charlotte’s pains were well advanced and set out for London immediately. They had stopped at Ipswich for fresh horses when the messenger delivered Dr Baillie’s note, that the child was dead but Charlotte was quite well. He continued on to Carlton House and went to bed, little thinking. York was sent in to tell him. Fred said he let out such a terrible cry he quite thought he would die on the spot. Now he keeps to his bed and puts off writing to Caroline to break the news to her, though pen and paper have been put in his hands. What ever shall we do, Nellie?

Sofy

The news was already spreading on the streets as I read Sofy’s letter. The Exchange suspended business, the assizes were postponed, shops closed their doors. Even Jack Buzzard knew better than to resist. Though he carried on working in the stillroom he pulled down the shop blinds as a mark of respect. There would be no parties. The country was plunged into sadness, as though people had known Charlotte personally.

On November 18th the bodies of Charlotte and her son were brought from Esher to Windsor. They rested one night at Lower Lodge and were buried the next evening in the vault of St George’s, where Amelia already lay. Caroline was still on her way from Italy, the Prince Regent was too ill to attend and the old King was too mad.

After the first weeks of mourning had passed, here’s how things stood: King George had fathered fifteen children. Three were dead, and now his only grandchild recognized in law was dead too. The rest was nothing but scandals and bastards. And so began the headlong gallop to produce an heir and secure the succession, a cavalcade of ageing princes who had sowed their oats and now found it advisable to marry appropriately and breed. The runners in this tragi-comical race were Billy Clarence, Eddie Kent, and Dolly Cambridge. Ernie Cumberland, already married, had a start on them, and hints that his duchess might already be with child concentrated the minds of his brothers with even greater urgency.

In the following year there were four royal weddings and the first of them was the most surprising. Princess Elizabeth received an offer from Prince Frederick of Hesse Homburg and, seeing a gap open up in the Windsor wall, she squeezed her ample body through it and accepted. The match had just about enough to recommend it. Elizabeth could provide money and Humbug, as they called him, could provide a little kingdom where she would be her own mistress. And as he was over fifty and so corpulent he moved about with difficulty, if he turned out to be a beast of depravity she wouldn’t have long to endure him. The Queen’s doctors feared the loss of Elizabeth would kill her but Sofy knew differently.

‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘Nothing revives Her Majesty so well as a grievance and she is EXCEEDINGLY angry with Elizabeth. Her pulse was quite feeble before, but this engagement has made it race along merrily.’

Elizabeth was married in April at the Queen’s House:

Eliza v. pink and beaming. She wore white, a nod to her undoubted virginity, though the effect was of a frigate under full sail. Fred York handed her in because the Prince Regent sent word that he was very bad with gout and could not come. I think he does not care for weddings any more. They remind him too much of our dear Charlotte. I, on the other hand, am GENUINELY gouty. Her Majesty graciously allowed me to remain seated with my leg on a stool.