That Sunday we trooped up to the castle for morning prayers, with Her Majesty and Royal leading the way and all of them in enormous hooped skirts, quite out of fashion. It was my first sighting of the Queen and the Queen’s first sighting of me.
‘Ach!’ she said, ‘poor child. Vot a face! Ken nussink be done?’
I might have said the same of her. She still wore her hair high and was as ugly as a turbot, sallow and stooped, with no neck to speak of, which must have been a great disadvantage for a queen with so many fine necklaces at her disposal. I was tall for my age so we were able to inspect each other eye to eye and, though I learned to dread encounters with her, that first day I felt bold. If she didn’t like me, I thought, let her send me back to Soho Square. It’s common knowledge that companions are liable to be ill-used, but at least I wasn’t one of those unfortunate creatures with no home to retreat to. Besides, I’d heard Sofy and Minny mimicking her, and if they had so little respect for her I saw no reason why I should care for her good opinion.
The King was a different matter. They all adored him and, well, he was the King. Even my father, who believed in progress and enterprise and was in the service of the Prince of Wales, even Papi esteemed King George. But that Sunday I was spared the ordeal of being inspected by the King because his legs were gouty and he was feverish again, so on the advice of his physician, he kept to his bedchamber.
After prayers we went to Upper Lodge for a breakfast of hot oatmeal and there I saw Miss Burney, the author of Evelina that Mother had once tried to read but had found too facetious. Miss Burney was a member of the Queen’s household, an assistant Keeper of the Robes. I imagined some terrible reversal must have forced her to leave off authoring and become a servant. I longed to speak to her, but at the Queen’s table conversation was by Her Majesty’s invitation only. The Royalties were hemmed in by many silly rules but this was one of the most regrettable, for the Queen was no judge of wit. Quite the opposite. Unerringly she turned to dullards and left people with lively minds to stew in silence.
It became my great hope to see Miss Burney again, perhaps even to speak to her, because she had been a real authoress, even if her fortunes were shockingly reduced. On Sofy’s birthday she appeared at Lower Lodge with the gift of a crewel-work heartsease pansy, framed in wood, and Sofy, dear soul, showed her the book that had been my gift to her: The Queen’s Quagga, written and illustrated by Cornelia Welche. I had decided ‘Cornelia’ looked handsomer than ‘Nellie’ for a book cover.
Miss Burney looked it over most carefully. ‘My compliments, Cornelia Welche,’ she said. ‘This is a fine piece of work.’
Which set my heart thumping and robbed me entirely of my voice and all the questions I had planned to ask her.
Sofy said, ‘We call her Nellie.’
And Amelia said, ‘She’s Sofy’s humble companion and there’s nothing can be done about her face except to paint it with ceruse when she is growed a little older.’
Miss Burney said, ‘I hope she will not. A young face should be left fresh and natural.’
Then Miss Gouly tried to hush Amelia but Amelia wouldn’t be hushed.
‘Oh, but Burney,’ she said, ‘the Queen says Nellie must paint it for if she don’t she’ll frighten the horses.’
My face was on fire but not because of Amelia. I was burning with happiness because Miss Fanny Burney had called my book ‘a fine piece of work’.
Sofy stared at her slippers and Minny threw a ball of paper at Amelia. Miss Burney bobbed a curtsey and hurried away. She almost always was in a hurry. When you were a Keeper of the Robes you never knew when the Queen might require you for her toilette. How terrible, I remember thinking, to have no time to call your own.
Miss Burney had no sooner left when the Prince of Wales arrived, with gifts of a clockwork parakeet and a necklace of seashells. He was accompanied by Frederick, Duke of York, who wore a bob wig and a coat that was far too tight. He giggled like a girl, and he had forgotten to bring a birthday gift. Then at three o’clock Lady Finch came to escort the Royal Highnesses to Upper Lodge for Sofy’s birthday dinner with the King and Queen, and I was left to dine with Miss Gouly, Mademoiselle Montmollin and Mrs Chevely, a poor widow, who had been the nursery nurse and was kept on out of charity, and against the day any of them should fall sick.
We ate in silence until I said, ‘It seems very odd to me, to invite a friend to your birthday and then go to dinner without her.’
Gouly and Mrs Che looked at each other as though the cat had coughed up a fur ball. Which of them should deal with it? It fell to Mrs Chevely, whose manner was less severe, perhaps because it was my first offence.
She said, ‘You mistake your position, Nellie. You’re a companion, not a friend. Do you understand the distinction?’
I said, ‘I know I’m not paid.’ Another fur ball.
I was sent to the school room to consider whether I was suitably grateful for the great honour done me. My mind though ran on other things. I wanted Sofy to return, to tell me what they’d had for dessert and who had said what. I waited and waited but she and Minny and Amelia slipped back into the house without my hearing them and went straight to their beds. Miss Gouly sent a maid to tell me I should do likewise. I found Sofy weeping and when I asked her why, she wept all the more.
‘I cannot tell you,’ was all she’d say. ‘I cannot.’
And I, fool that I was, couldn’t leave it at that but had to start guessing what was troubling her.
I said, ‘Is it the Illustrious Personage?’
That was what they called the Queen when they made fun of her.
‘Don’t be disrespectful, Nellie,’ she said, and cried all the more. ‘Poor, poor Mama.’
That was how I learned that though it was acceptable to laugh with Royalties it was not permitted to aim a solo barb at Royalties. I fled down the back stairs and out of the house. I thought I would run away from Windsor and never return, but in my haste I hadn’t put on my warm joseph or taken my change purse which contained two shillings and six pence. It was dark and an icy wind was tossing the trees. I believe I should have frozen to death if Miss Burney hadn’t come upon me.
‘Cornelia Welche!’ she said. ‘What do you do out of doors without a coat?’
I told her I was quitting my position as Humble Companion and asked her which was the road for London. She said it would be the greatest pity for a promising author to have her throat cut by a footpad before she had begun to make her name in the world, and she wrapped her mantle around my shoulders and took me to her little chamber at Upper Lodge and gave me a dish of tea.
I learned then that Miss Burney had had published not one novel but two, and though she was presently unable to write a third, kept as she was in a permanent dither by the Queen—forgotten for hours, sent for with great urgency, dismissed, not needed after all—she still wrote a journal. When I asked her if she thought she would ever write more books she said, ‘Oh yes. Writers, you know, never stop, no matter how many obstacles life throws in their path or how much publishers plead with them. I’m afraid it’s an incurable vice. Now, tell me why you planned to run away.’
I recounted my unhappy day. I said, ‘I thought I was going on quite well but now it seems I was mistaken. Well, better if they find someone else.’
She said she understood how difficult it was to judge distance with the Royalties, that their lives were fixed and narrow in ways we couldn’t begin to imagine, but whatever Mrs Chevely might say, Sofy had as much need of a friend as of a humble companion.
I said, ‘I don’t see why. I’ve never had a friend. I don’t even have a sister any more and Sofy has five.’
She said, ‘But you have an inner life that she does not. And if you knew what occurred this afternoon you would feel nothing but compassion for her.’
And I said, ‘But I don’t know. So how can I?’
Miss Burney had a long nose and a trembling watchfulness, like a little woodland creature. In later years, when I learned what became of her, I concluded that it must have been living with the Royalties that made her seem so timid because after she left the Queen’s service she lived her life with the courage of a lion.
She thought for a while, considering how much to tell me. Then she related the afternoon’s events in a very low voice. First, she said, the King, who was a stickler for punctuality, had come very late to the dinner table and in a state of great agitation. He wouldn’t sit or eat or drink but wanted only to pace about and talk and talk and would not be calmed by anyone, even when his voice began to fail. Later I heard it whispered between housemaids that his breeches had been unbuttoned too and spittle had foamed from his mouth, but Miss Burney omitted that. She spoke only of his agitation. He had kissed the Prince of Wales and clasped him to his bosom, then, in the space of five minutes, thrown him roughly across the room and called him an idler and a glutton. The Queen had wept, the Prince of Wales had wept, then Fred York had joined in. It had taken the best efforts of Royal and Augusta to persuade the King to retire. Sir George Baker, the physician, had been sent for, and the King was to be blistered if he would only stand still long enough for the mustard plaster to be applied to his head.
I asked her what they called the King’s affliction and she said it didn’t have or need a name because it was not to be spoken of. And then I did feel for Sofy. Since my sister’s death I understood what it was to live with sadness walled up.
An Assistant Keeper of the Robes only merited a tiny fire in her grate but I’d have sat by it happily for hours. Nellie Welche in conversation with Miss Fanny Burney.
She said, ‘We must pray tomorrow brings happier news. And you know, there’s a silver lining to the cloud. This evening you and I are both excused our duties. We should put our time to good use. Do you have a candle? Do you have paper? I can give you paper.’
