That first day seemed endless. I sat with Sofy all afternoon, wondering what might be happening at Westminster. Her hope was that the Bill would be dismissed immediately and the King would have to find a way to accommodate his queen. At six o’clock, as I was about to leave, Mrs Denman came in to tell us that the Lords had voted in great numbers to proceed with the Bill and that the Attorney General and Mr Brougham had given their opening speeches. Mr Brougham was Caroline’s attorney and Mr Denman was his second.
Mrs Denman said the Queen had worn full mourning for the Duchess of York and had remained in the chamber all day, listening to what was said. Mr Brougham, she said, had made an excellent beginning. He wasn’t a strong man, was given to sudden collapses and prostrations, but he had spoken very eloquently of the fundamental wrongness of the Bill. If the Queen was guilty of such a long list of offences and over such a long span of years, why had she never been impeached?
Mrs Denman said, ‘Of course, Mr Brougham was most careful not to name the King.’
He’d said he wouldn’t for one minute suggest that spitefulness lay behind this sudden inquiry into the Queen’s character and then, having trailed the coat tails of the idea, he’d prayed he would never be obliged to make such a suggestion. The House of Lords had adjourned at five and the Queen had retired to Hammersmith. She had taken a house there, to be away from the noise and crowds of town.
Two nights in the country refreshed her sufficiently that she felt well enough by Sunday afternoon to drive all about London and test whether her popularity had cooled. It had not. The news sheets made such mouth-watering reading she was cheered everywhere she went. As Sal said, it was better than going to a play because every day some new scene was added. The Queen cast out, without the consolation of a husband and expected to live like a nun. The Queen, seen jiggling on the lap of her valet-de-chambre and wearing no stockings.
On the third day witnesses were brought in from Caroline’s own household, Italian servants who had been kept in a secret place until they were called, to prevent any London mob from hanging them. The Queen, Mrs Denman reported, had risen from her seat and cried out in alarm when she saw one of her manservants brought in.
‘So now,’ she said, ‘Mr Brougham has advised her to stay away while such disagreeable testimony is heard.’
But the Queen didn’t stay away. She recovered her composure and listened to everything.
‘All filth and depravity,’ Miss Tod said, and she studied every report, to make sure.
Sofy began to waver in her support for Caroline. She said, ‘It’s far, far worse than I expected. How can she bear to have everything picked over? Even the state of her bed sheets, Nellie. It’s too shaming.’
My feelings ran the other way. The more I heard the more I pitied the Queen. If the King could take women to his bed; why was a different standard applied to Caroline? She was beyond the age of child-bearing. The succession wasn’t in jeopardy. She was indelicate, certainly, and indiscreet, but those were weaknesses, not crimes. It seemed to me her greatest error was marrying into such a nest of hypocrites.
The prosecution continued for three weeks, then a recess was called. Sofy thought this detrimental to the Queen’s case, to interrupt the enquiry when the sympathy of the country was so strongly for her, but of course the Lords knew little and cared less for the views of the people. Besides, Mr Denman had suffered an eructation of the liver and Mr Brougham was exhausted. Both needed to rest if they were to give of their best in the Queen’s defence. The trial continued at the beginning of October and Mrs Denman resumed her daily reports. ‘Mr Brougham has been on his feet all day,’ she said. ‘Mr Denman says he never heard him so persuasive.’
One of Brougham’s themes was that the witnesses for the prosecution were all foreigners, famous for being unreliable, and that no two of them had agreed on anything. And where were the English servants, supposedly too scandalized to have remained in the Queen’s service? Not one of them had been brought forward.
All through October Caroline’s following grew. Wasn’t she a simple, vulnerable woman, far from home, with no brother or father to protect her? Didn’t her only child lie in a tomb at the very heart of her enemy’s castle? She was every wronged wife, she was a most particular tragedy, and if she kept pistols in her house was it any wonder when the Royalties were clearly plotting to do away with her? At Hammersmith there was a constant traffic of supporters, sporting white ribbands and feathers and carrying declarations of her innocence. Sometimes the road was so crowded with well-wishers she was obliged to travel to Westminster by barge. No sensible man in the street, the Morning Chronicle wrote, could fail to be convinced that the Queen was the object of a vicious persecution by a person who could not be named. But the Bill wasn’t being considered by sensible men in the street. It had to be decided by men like Fred York and Billy Clarence.
By the beginning of November I was perfectly bored with the Queen’s case. It was Sofy’s birthday but I knew how the afternoon would go if I sat with her in her drawing room. The clock would tick, she’d pick over what she’d heard from Mrs Denman, and my eyes would grow heavy.
I said, ‘Let’s go out.’
‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I must stay in. What if there’s news?’
‘There won’t be any news. They haven’t even begun the closing speeches.’
‘But Nellie, it may not be safe while this dreadful business goes on. York had mud flung at him, you know. What if I’m noticed?’
‘You won’t be noticed. Don’t you know that a lady becomes invisible at forty? And anyway, if the Duke of Clarence dares to be seen drinking in Brooks’ Club I’m sure his sister may visit the Exeter Exchange.’
We took a hackney carriage to Piddock’s Menagerie to see the elephant and the rhinoceros, then to Mivart’s for a pot of chocolate and a slice of cake and back to Connaught Place before dark. No news had come, no mud had been flung and Sofy had a little colour in her cheeks.
30
The Bill was put to the vote on Monday afternoon and approved by a narrow majority. Then the horse-trading began. The divorce clause should be dropped. The divorce clause must by no means be dropped. There was a great fear that if the Bill proceeded to the House of Commons the Queen would unleash stories against the King that would certainly bring him down. The Lords voted twice more and at each vote the majority was reduced. The Bishop of London thundered, Lord Liverpool raged and at the end of another long day the Bill was abandoned. The Lords had effectively declared the Queen guilty but the country believed her innocent, or innocent enough, and therefore no one dared to take the matter any further.
Mrs Denman said the Prime Minister had gone to St James’s to break the news to the King. It was the worst possible outcome, a partial, paper victory that left him as married as ever, as encumbered with the Queen as ever, and now universally despised by the people.
Sofy cried a little. She said, ‘If only he had not begun it. I think it will be the end of him, Nellie. I think he may retire to Brighton and leave Fred York to reign.’
As word spread, the King hurried away to Windsor with his carriage blinds closed and the Queen made her triumphal torch-lit way to Hammersmith. Bonfires were lit in Hyde Park, every boat on the river had its lanterns hoisted, and Jack kept the night watch again. As he said, when the man in the street gets what he’s agitated for he’s still liable to break a few windows, by way of celebration.
After a week of jubilation the people began to discover little reasons to deprecate the Queen: for sure she’d soon be pocketing a handsome pension; what had she ever done for them? And why must she guy herself up with so much lace and rouge? No, perhaps they didn’t love her so much after all. A few days more and the King had recovered his spirits well enough to enjoy planning a coronation for himself and himself alone. Another week, and Sofy found something new to fret about. Adelaide Clarence had reached her eighth month and happy though Sofy was to think that her sister-in-law would be blessed with a child at last, she had rather pinned her hopes on Drina Kent for the succession. I noted the sad rivalry in my journal:
December 14th 1820
The Clarences have a daughter. She will be called Princess Elizabeth. Everyone is delighted except the Duchess of Kent, now reduced in rank to Mother of a Spare and Sofy who regrets whatever Vicky Kent regrets. At least the famine of heirs is at an end.
The Duchess of Kent came back to London and moved into Kensington Palace, though the builders still weren’t finished, and Sofy decided to follow suit. She said it was for the pleasure of seeing little Drina and Feodora every day but there was undoubtedly another attraction. Vicky Kent had retained Eddie Kent’s equerry, Captain Conroy, to have charge of her household, and the very mention of his name made Sofy blush. She was in love again.
John Conroy was ten years Sofy’s junior, with a wife and five children at home in Shooters Hill, but that detail didn’t signify. The affair took place entirely inside her head. A prince might live like a tomcat but she had learned the hard way that a princess could not. But she wore new shawls and laughed gaily whenever Conroy was close by, and in the spring she bought a horse and kept it at Fozard’s livery so she could join the party whenever the Duchess and her chamberlain rode out.
For a while I hardly saw her. Jack laughed about it. ‘Out of favour are we?’ he said. ‘You’ll end up in the Tower yet, Nellie.’
It didn’t grieve me. I loved Sofy but I couldn’t sit five minutes with Vicky Kent. She was a silly, vain woman. I was glad of time to myself too. A person can waste a great deal of precious writing time while a Royal Highness dithers over which gloves to wear.
In March the Clarences’ baby girl died, only three months old, and the Kents’ star began to rise again. Drina was third in line, after her uncles Fred York and Billy Clarence. ‘I’m very sorry for Billy and Adelaide’s loss of course,’ Sofy said, ‘but you know the child never did thrive. Drina will make an altogether better heir, so sound and healthy and it’s clear she’s going to be such a beauty.’
Well, there spoke a blind and doting aunt. Drina was a stolid Hanover child, her father all over. Feodora was the one who had the good looks and a blighted blessing that must have been. Bad enough to outshine any half-sister, but to put a little Crown Princess in the shade was unthinkable. I predicted an early marriage for Feodora, to some faraway duke. From then on all efforts were bent to turning Drina into a future queen and the first step was a more queenly name.
Captain Conroy says … three words that I saw with ever greater frequency in Sofy’s letters:
Captain Conroy says we had better call her Victoria, and she must be guarded NIGHT AND DAY. He has secret information that there may be an attempt on her life. Imagine! Vicky believes the threat comes from the Cumberlands. She thinks Ernie will stop at nothing to put his own boy on the throne but she doesn’t know Ernie as I do. He’s quite contented in Hanover and you know Drina, VICTORIA as I must now remember to call her, can never be Queen of Hanover. Their law prevents a female succeeding. So Ernie’s son can have Hanover and VICTORIA can have England and there will be no need at all for any unpleasantness. Nevertheless I do agree with Captain Conroy that we must take the greatest care of our angel child.
Our new King’s coronation was fixed for July 19th and preparations were well in hand. It was a vast project. The robing before the ceremony and the banquet after it were to take place in Westminster Hall and its stone floor had been overlaid with wood and carpet. The path between the hall and the abbey was canopied and carpeted, and inside the abbey boxes were built to seat the Royalties. But of the King’s sisters only Minny Gloucester and Augusta planned to attend.
Sofy said, ‘It would be too long a day for me. I’d have to be in my carriage by five. And then those hateful, heavy robes, and in July. I’d die.’
Elizabeth said she couldn’t come. She’d poured all her money into Humbug’s bottomless pit so she had nothing left to pay for jaunts. Royal pleaded poor health and said she wouldn’t come.
Sofy said, ‘It really doesn’t matter. I’m sure none of us will be missed.’
It was true, the only question that interested people was whether Caroline would be crowned too. She had applied to the Privy Council to know what arrangements had been made for her procession and crowning. The answer came back that no arrangements had been made. There would be only one crown and one throne and the Queen had better stay at home and keep the peace.
Sofy said, ‘But I’m certain she’ll go to the abbey, Nellie.
You know how she is. Nothing will keep her away.’
All the signs were there. Caroline rode about town every day to keep herself in view, and she made sure to have her gig pulled along by broken-down horses and always to have a hole in her stocking so people might think how ill she was treated. It came to two days before the coronation and the question was still being debated: did common usage give a queen the right to be crowned whatever the King might say, or was a coronation in the King’s gift and therefore his to withhold? The lawyers argued the case back as far as King Canute but the material point was this: Caroline had better have her crown or windows and heads would be broken.
Sofy said, ‘I’m sure she’s given the King every opportunity to climb down. You know, she offered to be crowned on a different occasion, perhaps next week, if another throne can’t be brought in by Thursday. One can’t say she’s being unreasonable, but His Majesty won’t have it. Minny says his insides are in knots. Well, the remedy is in his hands. He should make peace with his wife.’
On Wednesday morning foot soldiers appeared on the streets around St James’s and by evening the abbey was surrounded by guards. Sal had planned to take Annie down to Horse Guards to see the new King ride by but Henry wouldn’t allow it. He thought blood would be shed before the day was over and he didn’t want any of it to be Topham blood. Uncle Christoff declined too. He preferred to sleep late. But Morphew minded neither early mornings nor the danger of a riot; in fact I believe he was hoping for a little mayhem at the very least.
I went with Sally and Annie to see the boat races on the Serpentine. It was a perfect, sunny day, not too hot, unless you were the King, sweating under your wig and cap of state. I’d given Jack instructions that Henry was to be let go no later than six o’clock so he could take Sal to the burletta at the Adelphi. There was to be free admittance, in honour of the day, until the theatre was filled up.
Annie and I stayed in Hyde Park until they lit the Chinese lanterns. Every tree, every booth, every boat on the water had lights.
‘Like fairyland,’ Annie said.
