I didn’t even attempt to return to the subject of troublesome news sheets and Mrs Fitz. Mother took up the theme of What Was To Be Done With Morphew and examined it without a pause until our meal was finished. I understood her method. She was luring us away from a controversial topic and Morphew was merely the decoy. He was in no real danger of losing his position. In fact on St Stephen’s Day he was deputed to take me and Susan our Necessary Maid to the Frost Fair. His wig had taken on an orange tinge from its Christmas Eve drowning and it gave off an agreeable smell of wine and cinnamon.

We skated from Hungerford Stairs as far as Temple, where there was a Punch and Judy puppet show set up on the ice, then we crossed to King’s Reach. Morphew was an excellent skater. He was from the county of Norfolk where there were few roads, only water dykes that froze in winter and so gave people the opportunity to put on their skates and visit their aunts and uncles. Susan the Necessary Maid had never skated before, but she wore the blades I had outgrown and we pulled her along between us.

All of London seemed to be on the river that day. Some had walked from as far away as Fulham. There were whole sheep being roasted at Southwark and prizefighters, stripped to the waist in spite of the cold, and booths where you could drink hot salop for a penny. Morphew was in great good humour. He bought us baked apples and a tiny glass trinket to give to Twyvil. I believe he was affected more than a little by the fumes from his wig.

I said, ‘I wonder what the Prince of Wales is doing today?’

Morphew said, ‘Junketing. Feeding his fat face off the sweat of working men.’

I said, ‘Or visiting Mrs Fitzherbert.’ Susan had never heard of Mrs Fitz.

‘She’s a lady he’s not allowed to marry,’ I explained, ‘but some people say he already did. What do you think, Morphew?’

‘That in’t a case of thinking,’ he said. ‘That’s a case of knowing. And I hope to God that don’t come back to trouble Mr Welche. I hope he’s never called to account.’

‘But what did Papi do?’

‘Only went to the Fleet hisself, to buy out a parson as was willing to do the marrying. I should know. I driv him there. Two hundred pounds, that cost. The parson was all atremble, poor beggar, and Mr Welche warn’t happy neither but you know how it is, Miss Nellie. He dussen’t disappoint his Royal Nibs. And then I took them to that certain lady’s house in Park Street.’

‘Did Papi actually see the marrying?’

‘He did not. Soon as we’d delivered the cleric we come back to the Square. And that’s as true as I stand here.’

I still couldn’t make sense of it. Mrs Fitz wasn’t the stuff of princesses. Her front curls were grey. Her waist was thick. And at Marine Pavilion she always went home after dinner. Wives didn’t do that. They embroidered screens and then went to bed to get babies. I didn’t know then how unaccountable love’s fancy can be.

5

On the last Sunday of February Mrs Lavelle called on her way home from church to tell us that, for the first time in many weeks, there had been no prayer for the restoration of the King’s health. Instead, there had been a prayer of thanksgiving for his perfect recovery. The Royalties had left Kew and returned to Windsor to complete their customary winter residence. A week later I received a letter from Sofy:

The King is entirely recovered. You would hardly know us. We walk about with him on the terrace every afternoon and the townspeople come to see him and cheer him. All we need now is for the Queen to regain her spirits. She is GREATLY DISCOMPOSED by our recent difficulties and finds she must live as quiet as possible but I hope I may VERY SOON be allowed to ask for you. Minny has a toothache. Amelia begs you will please write us another story and send it EXPRESS.

I was usually happy to provide Amelia and Sofy with stories but suddenly I found I could not write. My sister was haunting me. As the anniversary of her death approached I smelled her everywhere. There was the scent of the dusting powder she loved, True Rose, and there was her own warm, milky odour, at the turn of the stair, in Papi’s cabinet, and even on the street. No one else seemed to notice it but I knew she was there. On the anniversary itself Mother remained in bed, seeing no one, and Papi dined with Dr Mayersbach. I took my supper in the kitchen and we talked and talked of Eliza until there was nothing left unsaid. I wept into my gravy, and Twyvil and Susan the Necessary Maid did too, though Susan had only been with us six months and had never known my sister.

The tears exhausted me. I slept a dead sleep that night and the next morning I felt different. Sofy’s cloud had lifted and so had mine. I could stop thinking ‘this time last year’. I ceased gorging myself on cake, the strain on my buttons eased and I began to write again.

In June I was summoned to Windsor, and went with mixed feelings. I looked forward to seeing Sofy but the thought that the King might slip into his agitations again filled me with dread. Miss Tod had been several times to Moorfields and paid her penny to see the mad Bethlemites. She told Mother it was a great novelty and better value than the opera any day, but I never had any wish to see it. If madness could capture the mind of an anointed King, who was safe?

Morphew drove me to Windsor. ‘Now, Miss Nellie,’ he said, ‘you keep your eyes and ears open. Some people say the King ain’t recovered at all. Some people say he’s six foot under, only they’ve got somebody dressed up to pass for him, to keep that perfeck fool off the throne.’

I said, ‘I don’t know that the Prince of Wales is a fool. I think people form their opinion of him from his dress but I’m sure a person can wear a yellow coat and still have his wits. And he was very agreeable to me, you know.’

‘Don’t signify,’ he said. ‘There’s no call for princes to be agreeable. Main thing is they don’t be too handy spending other folks’s money, and that one’d beggar the Queen of Sheba.’

‘Anyway, Princess Sofy says the King goes on very well. We must allow her to know the truth. And Papi. If the King had died Papi would have been one of the first to hear of it.’

But Morphew tapped the side of his nose and said, ‘He might do. But that might suit him to pretend he don’t. You see what I’m saying? Mr Welche, he’s in clover now but that won’t last, not when His Nibs is King. There’ll be new people brought in, depend upon it.’

Windsor was in an uproar of packing trunks. The Majesties and the older Princesses were soon to leave for Weymouth in the county of Dorset, where the King’s brother, the Duke of Gloucester, had a house. The doctors had recommended the King try sea-bathing, in aid of his continued recovery. In any normal family he might have gone very conveniently to Brighton and stayed in his son’s well-appointed house but I suppose Mrs Fitzherbert was the obstacle, invisible and unacknowledged but substantial enough to make the King drive for two days instead of one morning.

When the Royalties travelled they took their household goods with them, as though other people’s houses had no basins or cloths or spoons. Also a great train of servants and attendants went with them too. The only items missing from the inventory were Sofy, Minny and Amelia. For some reason their presence wasn’t reckoned to be essential to the King’s recuperation. They were to remain at Lower Lodge. I saw the hand of the Queen in this strange decision, for what father wouldn’t be comforted by the company of all his daughters? But the Queen found six girls to be too much of a good thing and preferred to torment them in twos or threes. Sofy accepted the ruling without complaint and I was quite the toast of the schoolroom, in part because of the stories I had written for them through their long, lonely winter, but principally because I had done something they had not. I had seen the sea and could describe it.

On my second morning at Windsor, Monsieur Hemet the dentist was expected. I asked Gouly if, while Sofy was having her teeth inspected, I might take a walk. My real intention was to go to Upper Lodge in search of Miss Burney but I was learning how to manage governesses. Walks were considered A Good Thing and permission for them was always granted.

Miss Gouly said, ‘Only don’t venture too far, Nellie. And don’t speak to anyone.’

Well, I obeyed her first instruction. Upper Lodge was no distance at all. But I did speak to someone. It was quite unavoidable.

June 28th 1789

Today I saw King George. I was in the park when he came along with P. Royal & Augusta. He walks with a cane. P. Augusta told him I was Sofy’s HC and he asked me where I lived. I told him King Square.

King Square had been reborn as Soho Square many years before, but I doubted His Majesty would know that and I thought he would enjoy its old name. As a child I was clever at framing things to delight people or flatter them. I had the knack of it from very young and eventually I grew to dislike the trait. It took me many years to eradicate it. The reward of easy approval can be too tempting to resist. King George certainly rose to my fly that morning.

‘King Square!’ he said. ‘Fine thing. And what king is your square named for, Nellie?’

‘King Charles II, sir,’ I crowed, and then tried to remember my history. Was Charles II a monarch King George would approve of or had I uttered an unmentionable name? Hadn’t there been a great number of natural children born and no heir? But it seemed not to matter to His Majesty. He was more interested to know if we had trees in our square. I assured him we had lime trees.

‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘Excellent. Unter der Linden, an der Heide. Birdsong. Branches. Etcetera, etcetera. We should like everyone to have the benefit of trees.’

He wasn’t at all as fearsome as the Queen, perhaps because he never quite looked at me. He seemed to be casting about, searching the horizon for something he couldn’t find. Nevertheless, when Augusta asked me where I was going I found my voice came out like a mouse squeak.

I said, ‘I hoped I might see Miss Burney before she goes away.’

The Princess Royal touched the King’s elbow, as if to set him in motion again, but he didn’t move.

Augusta said, ‘Nellie is a writer of stories, sir. She keeps Sofy and Amelia greatly amused. I think our Miss Burney intends to bring her on.’

And the King said, ‘Stories? Well there’s a thing. Never saw the point of stories myself but Miss Burney is an excellent, sensible woman and the ladies find her diverting so who can argue against that. The ladies, the lovely ladies. Who can argue? Continue on.’

He pointed his cane ahead and they left me. My heart was pounding. Whatever Morphew believed, a king didn’t feel like a mere hooman when you were standing so close to him you could see a dog hair on his cuff.

Finding Miss Burney proved impossible. A scullion referred me to a Page of the Backstairs who referred me to a maid of the Queen’s Dresser. She said the Queen was presently at her second toilette and Miss Burney was not likely to be dismissed before the hour of three unless she was excused, and then only briefly, while Her Majesty was powdered. I took the street way back, and quickly. I didn’t feel equal to another conversation with the King just yet. And as I made my way to the schoolroom I decided to say nothing about my encounter. If I did I would be quizzed on it and was sure to be found guilty of some disrespectful lapse. In the event, no one was interested in where I’d been or what I’d done. Caries had been found in two of Amelia’s teeth and so the world was about to end.

The next morning the great caravan set off. First the baggage and boxes and a wagon filled with provisions, for the Majesties objected to the price of food in Weymouth. Next, the ladies of the household, followed by the Queen with Royal, Augusta and Elizabeth. The King was the last to leave. Then the clatter and shouting ended and Windsor fell quiet.

Sofy said, ‘How dull we are now. I wish Ernie would come home, and Dolly and Gus.’

Prince Ernest and Prince Adolphus were in Göttingen, perfecting their German and being turned into good Hanoverian soldiers. Prince Augustus had been sent there too although he hadn’t the constitution for soldiering. They should have let him stay in England with his books. He might have made a very happy country parson if he hadn’t had the misfortune to be born a prince.

Sofy spoke often of her brothers. Years had passed without her seeing them and in their absence their virtues were magnified. She held them to be altogether more dashing and brilliant than I could believe possible if the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York were a fair sample of the male line, and she despaired of them ever coming home. There was no soldiering for them in England and they needed to appear honourably occupied. The public were in no mood to hear of any more Royalties sitting in the Kit-Kat Club drinking claret wine. People were watching what was unfolding in France.

King Louis had been warned by his Parliament that he and his lords ought not to live so high when the coffers were empty and the poor went hungry. Papi said the poor always go hungry. It was the natural order of things. And if France had no money she had only herself to blame, for hadn’t it all been spent encouraging America to turn against her mother country?

The French King, I suppose, wasn’t accustomed to being lectured on the price of bread and the need to pay taxes. He hesitated, then conceded a little ground, thinking perhaps that it would be easily enough regained. In July his militias were ordered to surround Paris to remind the people of his sovereign power, but he misjudged the tide. The people were already on the streets and two great arsenals were seized. At the Bastille, when the governor tried to prevent the mob from making off with gunpowder and muskets, he was cut to pieces in the street.

It was not the English way. If there was a march because barley was in short supply or oats had gone up in price, or if carters were discontented and a tollgate was pulled down, when the point had been made everyone went home to their beds. And if they found they couldn’t sleep, they composed a pamphlet. In England the weapon was the pen not the pike. Nevertheless, a tremor of unrest was brought even into our peaceable house. Morphew, who had never been known to miss a meeting of the Haymarket Grumblers’ Club, began instead to attend debates organized by the Friends of Liberty. He brought home a paper, On the Grievances of the French People, which he asked me to read aloud to Twyvil and Susan after Mother had retired for the night.

He said, ‘You’ll make a better job of it than me, Miss Nellie, for it gets me all choked up. And you may learn something from it, besides. Something as may be worth passing on to certain friends of yours.’