The trial was set for August 17th and Caroline had every reason to feel confident. If she went about she was cheered in the street, and every day more people wore the white cockade to show they were of the Queen’s party. The King’s friends boarded up their windows and hurried away to their country estates, and Lady Haddon told Henry she had been twice to Drury Lane to see Mr Kean’s Othello and the orchestra had omitted to play God Save the King on both occasions for fear of being attacked by the audience.
In the royal family Sofy was almost alone in her support for Caroline. Only Minny’s husband, Gloucester, sided with her. Augusta, Minny, Fred York and Billy Clarence were all firmly behind the King. Gus Sussex too, in spirit, though he found it conveniently necessary to go to Bath for a water cure and so was spared the unpleasantness of going to Westminster for the trial. Sofy found it so uncomfortable, lodging at Gloucester House where husband and wife were at loggerheads on the subject of the Queen, that she moved to a house in Connaught Place until her new apartments were ready and so became my even closer neighbour. We saw each other almost every day.
She said, ‘Augusta told me the King’s nerves are so bad he’s liable to die, and the way she looked at me as she said it you would have thought I was to blame for his situation. Well, I will not be bullied, Nellie. I’m sure I wish His Majesty no ill, but I will not say he’s in the right when I believe he’s in the wrong. He has supporters enough to do that.’
I’d never seen her so fiery. I encouraged her to stand firm and she did, even when one of the King’s pillars threatened to crumble. The Duchess of York died and Fred York, the brother on whom the King leaned more than any other, collapsed with unaccountable grief. Contrary to all appearances it had apparently been the happiest of marriages, conducted in separate houses and never fewer than fifteen miles apart. There were no children. This may have been due to some deficiency in the Duchess, but by all accounts her bed was a heaving mass of dogs and cats so making access to her person difficult for the nimblest of husbands; and Fred York was a lumbering man, cursed with the Hanover belly.
The days before the trial began were unpleasant. Mobs formed, shouted threats against the King, then dispersed as suddenly as they had gathered. Rocks were thrown, fires were set, slogans appeared on walls. Jack and Henry slept at the shop, to keep watch. Morphew thought it should be his job but Jack didn’t trust him.
He said, ‘For one thing, he’s too old. He’s liable to fall asleep, and for another thing, he doesn’t know if he’s a hare or a hound.’
I said, ‘And where do you and Henry stand, for king or queen?’
He said, ‘We stand for trade, Nellie. Good order on the streets so decent people can keep their houses open and give dinners. That’s what we stand for. You’re to keep Morphew at home. He knows he’s needed there anyway to help your uncle go to the necessary.’
Morphew grumbled quietly, but obeyed. He was always careful not to make Uncle Christoff feel a nuisance.
The day before the enquiry began dragoons appeared on the streets. By the next morning there were Foot Guards all the way down Whitehall to Parliament Square and two yawls were at anchor in the river, with cannon in their bows. The Times said the whole business was a travesty, a trial in which the Lords were both prosecutors and judges. And how could the Queen be accused of impurity without the King’s conduct in the marriage also being inquired into?
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.
