Temporary apartments were found for the Kents at Kensington Palace. A terrible suite of rooms, according to Sofy, where you couldn’t hear yourself think for the noise of the vermin in the walls. On closer acquaintance with Vicky Kent she had decided to like her and to take her part.
She said, ‘It’s not right, Nellie. The paper is peeling from the walls and there’s not a comfortable place to sit. I’ve had two sleeping chairs sent up from Kew. A woman in Vicky’s condition must have somewhere to rest. And I’ve ordered a bed from Gillow’s warehouse for Feodora. Sweet child. The dear has been sleeping on a broken truckle cot and hadn’t liked to complain.’
Feodora was Vicky Kent’s daughter from her first marriage. There was a son too, but he had remained in Leiningen to finish his education and prepare to rule his principality. Feodora was eleven years old and had been uprooted from everything she’d ever known, obliged to fall in with her mama’s new life. She was expected to speak English at all times and to look forward to the arrival of a brother or sister whose birth would perforce push her into the shade. I was glad to think she’d found an ally in Sofy.
On May 24th Vicky Kent was delivered of a girl. A few days later, in Hanover, the Cumberlands had a son, another George. The Kents had intended to name their daughter Georgiana but the Prince Regent absolutely forbade it. I suppose he didn’t care for the idea of a new generation of Georges flowering while he waited and waited for the throne. I could have felt sorry for him, his only child dead, his looks gone and his health, and still no crown on his head. I saw him at Windsor that summer, walking with a cane and breathless after two steps. He would powder his face with Pears’ Imperial, but what with all his perspiring and dabbing the effect was so mottled it was no improvement, and his new Waterloo teeth moved about when he spoke. He was a pitiful sight, and bad-tempered too.
‘Name her anything but Georgiana,’ he said. Though I imagine he wouldn’t have liked them to choose ‘Caroline’ either.
In the event she was named Alexandrina Victoire and for years the only name I ever heard her called was Drina. That only ceased when it became clear that some day she would be our queen. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Drina and the two baby Georges were heirs enough for the time being and Eddie Kent was cock of the walk, quite intending to add sons to the nursery and remove any doubts about the succession.
He took Vicky and Drina and Feodora off to Devonshire and leased a house by the sea. Sofy was disappointed.
She said, ‘Such a great distance away but Eddie says he can’t afford to live in London. Now I shall never see those little girls. Of course if the Prince Regent would only do something for them it wouldn’t be necessary for them to go so far into the country, but he will not. I have to console myself with the thought that the sea air will be beneficial for the children.’
Beneficial for the children, perhaps, but not for Eddie Kent. Before January was out he was dead of a pneumonic fever and Fred York had to send an equerry through the snow and ice to pay for a casket. The undertaker wouldn’t allow the body to be carried off to Windsor until his account had been settled. The Kents’ credit wasn’t good in Sidmouth.
There was little mourning for the Duke of Kent. That news soon dropped from sight because a week later the King was dead. The abbey bell tolled first, then every other church took up the sad note. Sofy wrote:
Our darling is gone. Augusta and I had both sat with him during the afternoon. He called out for Amelia once but otherwise he seemed at peace. He was so terribly frail, Nellie. It was hard to remember what a fine, vigorous figure he used to cut. He passed away just after eight o’clock. Fred York was with him at the end.
All those years the King had seemed not to know how to die, it was a relief to think he’d gone to his rest. The maddoctors had stopped trying to cure him long since and his lamps had gone out. He just sat in his chamber, bundled in a baby napkin and gazing into God knows what hell, waiting for death to remember him. But, wrote Sofy:
Now our new Majesty lies gravely ill. He has an inflammation of the lungs and his physicians are most anxious. We must pray, Nellie, that we shan’t bury two kings in the same week. It’s sad enough that Drina will never know her papa.
I took young Annie to hear the proclamation at Charing Cross. Nearly eight years old, it was something she’d remember all her life. When I told her that our new king was the person who had put me forward to be a companion to his sister she said she wished she had a brother to do her such a kindness. But Annie wasn’t meant to have brothers or sisters. Sal had had three babies after her and every one of them was buried in its chrisom cloth.
She said, ‘I expect he picked you out because of your harlequin face.’
Annie thought my mark was something very special, perhaps the only one in the world, so I told her about Tom Garth, whose face was a mirror-image of mine.
She said, ‘Then I’m right, Grandma Nellie. The old King had a harlequin so the Princess’s kind brother got her one too.’
I shouldn’t have spoken of Garth. After all those years his name still opened my old wound. But I would do it.
When the trumpets sounded for the proclamation Annie clung to my arm. It was a sound to make your hair stand on end. But she paid such close attention to what was said that when we went back to the Pink Lemon she performed it for Jack and Henry—nearly word perfect!
‘George Gustus Frederick, Prince of Wales, by the death of the late sovereign, of happy memory, is now become our only lawful and rightful leaf lord, George IV, King of Great Britain and Ireland, Defender of the Face.’
The funerals of Eddie Kent and the old King were delayed until our new Majesty was well enough to rise from his sick bed, and in the hiatus it was decided to move the coffins of little Prince Alfred and Prince Octavius from where they lay in Westminster Abbey to Windsor, to be reunited with their parents in the family vault. Sofy wrote:
The King, I mean the OLD King, often asked for Alfred and Tavy in recent times. Sometimes he imagined they were alive and playing in his room. I hardly remember those little boys, you know. How long ago it all seems. But I’m glad to think they’ll all be together again.
Now my boxes are packed and so are Augusta’s. She will go to Frogmore directly after the funeral and I shall come to town. I’m to have rooms at Kensington Palace and Vicky Kent will bring the children back from Devonshire and live there too but not until the place is made fit to live in. In the meanwhile I shall lodge at Minny’s house on Piccadilly while the renovations are done and will expect to see my Humble Companion VERY OFTEN. There’s no place for me at Windsor now, Nellie. Our new Majesty must have it, to do with as he chooses. He is still v. weak but his doctors’ bulletin struck a brighter note this morning.
Old King George was buried on February 16th 1820, and our new King George rallied and lived to reign. Then the question was, did he have a queen or did he not?
29
In April Sofy left off her black bombazine and began wearing grey. In May she put on lavender and ventured out with me to buy bed linens and new spectacles, fashionable ones with side pieces so as—she said—to look a little less like an old owl. Her company was more enjoyable than I ever remembered it. With the old Majesties gone a weight had been lifted from her. She had money to spend and when the mourning period ended she was free to go wherever she pleased. She bloomed, a little. And on the subject of the King she grew very outspoken.
One of his first acts had been to have Caroline’s name omitted from prayers for the royal family. Caroline, Queen Caroline as many now called her, asked that a ship be sent to bring her back to England in fitting style.
Sofy said, ‘And do you know His Majesty’s reply? Not only will he not send a ship, he’s also demanded the return of a particular tea service. As if he doesn’t have cups and saucers enough.’
At first the King seemed not to grasp the mood of his people. Caroline’s absence had made their hearts grow fonder. Wasn’t she the mother of Charlotte, flower and hope of the nation, whom we had lost? And whatever was said about her, could she be any less regal a figure than her husband?
‘That painted lump,’ Morphew called him. ‘He’s afeared she’ll come and bump his fat cheeks off the throne. Well there’s plenty wouldn’t mind to see her do it.’
Caroline took her time, assembling her suite to travel north, and the delay played on the King’s nerves. He began to lose his appetite for a fight and sent her an offer: a pension for life if she would renounce her claim to a crown and stay permanently out of the country. On the other hand, if she persisted in coming to England all the stories of her bedfellows and her irregular household would be examined and she risked being tried for high treason.
Sofy hoped and believed that Caroline wouldn’t come. ‘She must know the King means to break her,’ she said.
‘The mother of his child. It would be too awful if he dragged her through a trial. Minny says he truly means to do it and of course she eggs him on, though I don’t see what Caroline ever did to offend her. I’ll tell you frankly, Nellie, I think Minny only does it to annoy her husband. Gloucester always took Caroline’s side, you know?’
Caroline was neither interested in a pension nor intimidated by the threat of a trial. She had decided to come to England and be crowned alongside her detested husband and come she did, by the Calais packet. She landed at Dover at the beginning of June and made her way to London, slowly and in an open carriage, to make sure the populace had a good view of their new queen. I saw her myself. Sally and I were returning from Voss’s consulting rooms where I had just had two teeth pulled and there was such a press of people we couldn’t get through to Park Street. They said Queen Caroline was expected at any moment, on her way to a house in South Audley Street where she was to spend her first night. My jaw was throbbing but Sal so wanted to see her we waited an hour, and in the end I was glad we’d persevered for I was able to give Sofy every detail.
She was all in black, long-sleeved, high-collared and very proper, and wore a splendid hat, with a jewel and three high feathers. Her coach was a poor shabby thing but I thought her deportment was altogether very queenly. She had an escort of gentlemen on horseback, and seated with her in the carriage was a lady and a swarthy young man looking most uncomfortable in a top hat and a grey cutaway coat. An Italian friend, I thought.
‘No,’ Sofy said. ‘Not Italian. That was Willy Austin. She’s brought that orphan boy with her. Minny is delighted. She says Caroline couldn’t have played a worse hand if she’d tried. Now the old gossip about will be raked over and that can only improve the King’s stock.’
But Minny and Sofy didn’t go about as I did, hearing what was said on the street, and both misjudged the country. Men who had come home from Waterloo expecting to be heroes were still without work and yet the new King was as profligate as ever. Therefore, any enemy of His Majesty was the people’s friend, or so the reasoning went. Uncle Christoff told me Morphew fully expected royal heads would roll and had searched out his old liberty cap, to be ready when the call to revolution came.
Queen Caroline took a house on St James’s Square and kept indoors. Society was waiting to see how the cards were dealt so no one risked inviting her to dinner and the only callers she had were lawyers. In July a Private Bill was placed before the House of Lords accusing Caroline of adulterous knowledge of her Chamberlain, Mr Pergami. The Bill asked that the royal marriage be dissolved and that Caroline forfeit her title and privileges as Queen Consort. The King shut himself away at Windsor while the Bill was under consideration, to escape the sound of stones being thrown at his London windows.
Both sides engaged lawyers and, according to Sofy, no effort was spared to bring the parties to an agreement—though I was never sure I believed that, for what does a lawyer enjoy more than a famous trial? It was unlikely anyway that either the King or his Queen would give any ground. Sofy dreaded a trial.
She said, ‘Who can say what may come out, what may be said in anger? And yet they both carry on as though they want a trial. I despair of them, Nellie, both of them. I’m only glad Charlotte didn’t live to see it.’
The trial was set for August 17th and Caroline had every reason to feel confident. If she went about she was cheered in the street, and every day more people wore the white cockade to show they were of the Queen’s party. The King’s friends boarded up their windows and hurried away to their country estates, and Lady Haddon told Henry she had been twice to Drury Lane to see Mr Kean’s Othello and the orchestra had omitted to play God Save the King on both occasions for fear of being attacked by the audience.
In the royal family Sofy was almost alone in her support for Caroline. Only Minny’s husband, Gloucester, sided with her. Augusta, Minny, Fred York and Billy Clarence were all firmly behind the King. Gus Sussex too, in spirit, though he found it conveniently necessary to go to Bath for a water cure and so was spared the unpleasantness of going to Westminster for the trial. Sofy found it so uncomfortable, lodging at Gloucester House where husband and wife were at loggerheads on the subject of the Queen, that she moved to a house in Connaught Place until her new apartments were ready and so became my even closer neighbour. We saw each other almost every day.
She said, ‘Augusta told me the King’s nerves are so bad he’s liable to die, and the way she looked at me as she said it you would have thought I was to blame for his situation. Well, I will not be bullied, Nellie. I’m sure I wish His Majesty no ill, but I will not say he’s in the right when I believe he’s in the wrong. He has supporters enough to do that.’
I’d never seen her so fiery. I encouraged her to stand firm and she did, even when one of the King’s pillars threatened to crumble. The Duchess of York died and Fred York, the brother on whom the King leaned more than any other, collapsed with unaccountable grief. Contrary to all appearances it had apparently been the happiest of marriages, conducted in separate houses and never fewer than fifteen miles apart. There were no children. This may have been due to some deficiency in the Duchess, but by all accounts her bed was a heaving mass of dogs and cats so making access to her person difficult for the nimblest of husbands; and Fred York was a lumbering man, cursed with the Hanover belly.
The days before the trial began were unpleasant. Mobs formed, shouted threats against the King, then dispersed as suddenly as they had gathered. Rocks were thrown, fires were set, slogans appeared on walls. Jack and Henry slept at the shop, to keep watch. Morphew thought it should be his job but Jack didn’t trust him.
He said, ‘For one thing, he’s too old. He’s liable to fall asleep, and for another thing, he doesn’t know if he’s a hare or a hound.’
I said, ‘And where do you and Henry stand, for king or queen?’
He said, ‘We stand for trade, Nellie. Good order on the streets so decent people can keep their houses open and give dinners. That’s what we stand for. You’re to keep Morphew at home. He knows he’s needed there anyway to help your uncle go to the necessary.’
Morphew grumbled quietly, but obeyed. He was always careful not to make Uncle Christoff feel a nuisance.
The day before the enquiry began dragoons appeared on the streets. By the next morning there were Foot Guards all the way down Whitehall to Parliament Square and two yawls were at anchor in the river, with cannon in their bows. The Times said the whole business was a travesty, a trial in which the Lords were both prosecutors and judges. And how could the Queen be accused of impurity without the King’s conduct in the marriage also being inquired into?
