She was right. Frederica arrived and the Queen refused to receive her. For the Prince of Wales it was a different matter. The regency had loosened the Queen’s hold on him. He came back to London in the middle of his Brighton season and opened up Carlton House to make a wedding for the Cumberlands. They were married according to the rites of the Church of England on August 29th 1815. Fred York was present, and Billy Clarence and Eddie Kent, back from long years overseas. The Archbishop of Canterbury officiated.
Sofy was quite resigned to not meeting Frederica. She said, ‘At least we have dear Ernie back where he belongs, and you know, the Queen may relent with time. Perhaps when she sees it’s a good marriage. Billy Clarence says he never saw such a devoted pair.’
Then Princess Minny said a very odd thing.
‘That may be so,’ she said, ‘but I still won’t be left alone with Ernie. Not for one minute.’
Sofy’s aches and pains never left her entirely and she’d been advised to try the Brighton waters again, but in the event she went to Weymouth instead and Sir Henry Halford, quite unaware that he was the cause of his patient’s racing heart, agreed to attend her there.
She said, ‘I don’t care for Brighton, Nellie. The Prince Regent keeps his rooms far too hot. And anyway I must go to Dorset. I should like to see Tommy before he goes away.’
Tommy Garth was fifteen. He’d left Harrow School and was going to Paris to improve his French.
‘Then to Hanover, for his German,’ Sofy told me. ‘And then he’ll return to England. Garth has purchased him a cornetcy in the Dragoons. Isn’t it splendid? My son a cavalry man, just like his father!’
26
I had wondered if the flood of dukes and princes into London after the peace might carry with it a suitable husband or two for the Royal Highnesses. Many of those who came were of mature years, and some too flawed even for the most desperate spinster, but some were widowers who might have been acceptable—perhaps the Princesses’ last hope of settling. Augusta was forty-eight and far too old for any man who needed an heir, but she never seemed unhappy about her situation. She was gay whenever General Spencer was in her vicinity, and when he wasn’t she filled her days with worthy activities and dutiful attendance on the Queen.
Sofy said, ‘Gusta is our draught horse. She hauls us all behind her. She walks and gardens and plays faro until she’s too exhausted to feel cross.’
Elizabeth and Minny clung to their dreams of marriage though, and if Sofy had none for herself I still hoped she’d find a husband willing to overlook one unfortunate piece of history. Compared to her brothers she seemed to me to have lived a blameless life.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ll never be a bride now. But I do the best I can as an aunt, and I hope I may be a great-aunt too. And don’t forget, Nellie, I have the consolation of a son. I doubt my sisters will ever have that.’
In fact there were two weddings that year. First Princess Charlotte. She knew her mind and had worn her father down. His hopes of despatching her to the Netherlands were extinguished anyway, for Dutch William had tired of waiting and married a Russian Grand Duchess instead. So Charlotte won her father’s blessing to marry Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. I had it, chapter and verse, from Sofy, and other news too:
Windsor, May 10th 1816
My dearest Nellie,
Charlotte and Leopold were married at Carlton House last Thursday week and now they are in Surrey making their honeymoon at Fred York’s house. Heaven knows why they chose Oatlands when they might have gone to any number of more agreeable houses. Minny was there last summer and she said the furniture is crusted with bird lime and everything smells of wet dogs.
The wedding went off very well though no amount of schooling succeeded in getting Charlotte to lighten her tread. She’s not an elegant girl, as you know, and the floor quite shook when she came in. The marrying was done in the red state room because an altar was still set up there from Ernie’s wedding, a reminder that did NOT please Her Majesty, as you may imagine. Charlotte was in silver and white, quite glowing with happiness. Leopold wore his regimentals. I like him VERY much. I think she has chosen well. What a sad thing though for her not to have her mama there.
They are to live in Esher when they’re not in town and plan to have a nursery full of babies. How old it makes me feel, Nellie. My little niece is now a married woman! My other news will make you smile. Minny is to be married too. Silly Billy Gloucester made her an offer and she accepted him. Can you believe it? He has no looks—did you ever see him? No chin and his eyes positively BULGE—and no wits either. Our dear Prince Regent hates him with a passion but he’s too fond of Minny to prevent the marriage if it’s what she wants. There’s also the delicate matter of Gloucester’s background, of course, but we don’t speak of it, to spare the Queen. She’ll be inconvenienced enough by Minny’s selfishly abandoning her without rubbing more salt on the wound.
Do come to Kew in August. I LONG to see you and have a great number of questions to ask about The Outcast, which I have read and passed around and bragged of my acquaintance with the author.
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.
