No suitable house had been offered to the Kents so they went back to Germany to address the urgent business of getting a baby. Ernie Cumberland’s wife was regularly rumoured to be pregnant but just as regularly failed to produce the evidence, so the matter of who would succeed when the old King and the Prince Regent were dead was as pressing as ever. At Kew, after the last of the carriages had driven away and the marriage chapel had been dismantled, the Queen entered her final slow decline. I was at Windsor in early November, in time for Sofy’s birthday, and the news then was that Her Majesty slept in a chair to ease her breathing, and was to have her legs drained again the next day.
Sofy said, ‘I hope death comes soon. Minny says she suffers terribly.’
A horse was kept saddled night and day, ready to take the news to London.
I said, ‘Will you go to Kew, to see her one last time?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘My place is here with His Majesty.’
I said, ‘But the King doesn’t know you’re here.’
‘Nevertheless,’ she said, ‘I will not leave him.’
Queen Charlotte died on November 17th. The Prince Regent was with her at the end, and Augusta and Minny. Then her body was brought to Windsor with a cavalry escort and buried in the vault of St George’s Chapel next to three generations who had gone before her: Amelia and Charlotte, and Charlotte’s little son who had no name. She went to her grave not knowing that three of her sons were to be fathers. Adelaide Clarence had miscarried but Gusta Cambridge, Vicky Kent and Frederica Cumberland were all with child and blossoming. The country had gone from no heirs to a sudden superfluity.
Kew was closed up for that winter of 1818 and Augusta moved to Windsor. The Queen had bequeathed her the Frogmore house but for the time being she chose to live with Sofy within the castle walls. The King might not have known she was there but Sofy was very glad of her company. The Queen’s bequest to Sofy was Lower Lodge.
She said, ‘Such a cold, gloomy old place. I shan’t keep it. I can’t think why she gave it to me.’
I said, ‘I suppose she wanted you to have a house to call your own.’
‘But I have money,’ she said. ‘When I’m not needed at Windsor any more I can buy a dear little cottage.’
She never did, though. The Prince Regent took on Lower Lodge and Sofy’s money was spent on other things. The first claim on her generosity was made that winter. She asked me to go with her to Drummond’s bank to arrange for money to be sent to Tommy Garth. He was in Melton Mowbray for the hunting season and living well beyond his means.
She said, ‘I’m sure Garth does what he can for him, but I should like to help him too. He’s been very sick of a marsh fever, you know.’
Though not too sick to chase foxes across Leicestershire. I said, ‘Did Tommy apply to you for money?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then he knows you’re his mother?’
‘Yes.’
‘And he thinks he can play the prince even if he lacks the title.’
‘Well, Nellie,’ she said, ‘you must agree, his position is difficult. I’m sure many in his situation would become quite resentful, but Tommy is such a sweet-natured boy.’
I couldn’t properly say. I’d seen him for no more than a few minutes since he was grown up, but I’d always feared he would grow up ungovernable. Garth had been too old to raise a child and Miss Wellbeloved too nervous. They had both indulged him and now Tommy saw himself as quite the dasher, buying horses and ordering hunting coats and all on a lieutenant’s half pay. Furthermore, he had a hold over Sofy and knew he could always apply to her for funds. It might have been better for everyone if he’d been left with the Sharlands and had never been told his parentage.
28
The royal babies were all expected in May. The Ernie Cumberlands were in Berlin and the Dolly Cambridges were in Hanover. The Eddie Kents decided to return to England for Vicky’s confinement.
Sofy said, ‘It’s too silly. There’s nowhere for them to live.’ I said, ‘What about Lower Lodge?’
‘Not at all suitable,’ she said. ‘Don’t you recall how small the nursery was?’
‘Or Frogmore, if Augusta doesn’t mean to live there?’
‘No furniture,’ she said. ‘Everything was sold.’
That had become Sofy’s way of thinking. She was stuck in her ways, always finding reasons things couldn’t be done, always discovering obstacles to her comfort and happiness. I grew very impatient with her.
I said, ‘Why do you stay at Windsor? It’s so miserable.’
‘Because the King is there. It’s my duty and Augusta’s.’
‘But you could live in some cosy lodge across the park and be just as dutiful.’
‘No. You don’t understand.’
Letters were her chief pleasure, especially from Elizabeth. She was refurbishing Humbug’s little kingdom so her letters were filled with sketches and plans. On days when no mails came Sofy grew quite crotchety.
‘You’d think,’ she’d say, ‘it wouldn’t be beyond a sister’s means to write a few lines each day.’
‘You’d think,’ I’d say, ‘that a Royal Highness, with money and time and no ties of marriage, would find some project to occupy her.’
And she’d say, ‘You and your projects. You have no idea. Your life is very different to mine.’ Indeed.
Eddie Kent was in high spirits and not at all deterred by the lack of accommodation in London. He wanted his child to be born in England though it made not a jot of difference to the succession. Billy Clarence was the older brother and therefore Clarences would always take precedence over Kents, wherever any of them were born.
Sofy said, ‘Eddie asks after poor Adelaide Clarence in every letter he sends. Well, I see through him. He has his eye on the throne, Nellie, and I’m sure his wife is urging him on. They mean to set out their stall, in case Adelaide continues to miscarry. They mean to have the news sheets writing them up and the people doting on them.’
The Kents set off for England at the end of March with a muddle of old carriages and borrowed carts, all overloaded in the name of economy. They were on the road when Dolly and Gusta Cambridge’s son was born and didn’t hear the news till they reached London. In Hanover, on March 26th 1819, George William Frederick Charles.
Sofy said, ‘Do you know what Eddie said when he heard? He said, “Dolly’s child doesn’t signify. He won’t be needed here. My son is the one the country’s looking to.” Imagine! I was so cross with him. I’d have reminded him about poor Charlotte, reminded him not to count unhatched chickens, but I couldn’t, not with Vicky standing there like a mare with hay belly.’
