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.
Humbug had tobacco on his waistcoat and traces of his dinner. He seems to adore Elizabeth and she told me the prospect of being a wife held no fears for her. However I noticed she lost her usual glow when the time came for them to leave us. The wedding night was spent at Windsor. Humbug rarely leaves off sucking on his pipe, you know. Minny and I surmise he may have kept it to hand, even in the BRIDAL BED.
Now they are gone to Homburg and the good Lord knows if we shall ever see Elizabeth again. The Queen suffered a great reversal after the wedding, as I knew she would with no bride to peck at. She is at Kew now with Augusta, I am at Windsor with our poor darling King and Minny spends a great deal of time in her carriage, travelling between us and so avoiding her husband.
I told the King Elizabeth was married. He seemed to understand and showed no distress. He just sits and sits, Nellie. I can’t imagine what his thoughts are.
Sofy
In May Dolly Cambridge brought home a German princess, Augusta of Hesse Kassel, and they were married in London.
‘Yet another Augusta!’ Sofy said. ‘But I like her. And she’s young and healthy. I’m sure we can depend on her to give us babies.’
Meanwhile Billy Clarence was feverishly searching for a wife and the Duke of Kent was putting his own affairs in order with surprising haste. I had never met Eddie Kent and Sofy hardly knew him. He had been overseas since she was a girl of eight and had lived many years in Canada. By 1818 he was in Brussels and his wife with him, though as there was no evidence of a marrying, Julie St Laurent wasn’t the kind of wife any Royalties would recognize. There was talk that they had children too, though if they existed they certainly didn’t live in his household.
‘I really cannot comment,’ was all Sofy would say. ‘He’s a stranger to me, Nellie, and the little I do know of him I don’t care for. He seems always on the verge of a terrible rage. And of course we can never receive Madame St Laurent.’
It didn’t matter. Madame St Laurent’s days were numbered. Perhaps Kent consulted Billy Clarence on the best way to shake off an inconvenient wife of twenty years’ standing. By the end of May he had courted and married Victoire Saxe-Coburg. She was a widow with a son and a daughter, so in the important matter of child-bearing she had already established her credentials.
Clarence had found himself a German bride too: Adelaide Saxe-Meiningen—‘dear, cheerful Adelaide’ as Sofy called her. She had no looks and little money and seemed grateful to get any husband. A double wedding was made at Kew that summer to save the Queen the discomfort of travelling. Billy Clarence to Adelaide and Eddie Kent to Victoire. A cannon was fired in Hyde Park in salute to the royal couples, but it seemed to me more like a signal that the race for the throne had begun.
