First I’d hesitated to visit Tommy, then when I had done it I hesitated to tell Sofy, but one thing I knew for certain. I’d visit him again. I’d go for Garth’s sake, I’d go to damn Ernie Cumberland and all his works, and yes, I’d go because the place was full of stories. We fell into a routine, Annie, Robert and I, to go to King’s Bench the first Saturday of the month. Sometimes I took money, sometimes a piece of bacon or a fowl, and shirts and stockings that had been Jack’s and still had wear in them. The second time we went Georgiana Astley appeared and what a sad, reduced creature she was, only thirty years old but faded and gaunt with a great deal of silver coming into her black curls. That was what prompted me to tell Sofy I’d been to see her boy.
I said, ‘Herbert Taylor must release some money. Enough for Tommy to pay the attorney and get his Garth inheritance, if nothing else. As things stand, his situation is impossible. And if you could see Lady Astley, cut off from her children, cast out by her family.’
Sofy said, ‘But Nellie, if only she hadn’t been so impetuous. I wonder if her husband could be persuaded to take her back?’
‘Too late for that, and anyway, I think she means to stick by Tommy, whatever happens. I suppose she loves him.’
‘Is she a beauty?’
I said, ‘I believe she was, before she lost her teeth.’ She sighed, then changed the subject.
She said, ‘Gus Sussex is to be married next week, you know. To Lady Buggin. I’m so glad for him. He’s been alone far too long. I just wish he’d do it properly. He says he doesn’t care a damn about Acts of Parliament, but he should consider his bride. I’m sure she’d rather like to be a duchess.’
Cissie Buggin lived not far from me in Great Cumberland Place. She was a fat, jolly little widow, fond of giving parties and a good paying customer of the Pink Lemon. To make her his Duchess Sussex needed the King’s permission for the marriage and the King would undoubtedly have given it, but Sussex wouldn’t ask. Perhaps the prospect brought back painful memories, of another king’s refusal and poor abandoned Goosy and her children. Or perhaps it was an indignity too far, a man of fifty-seven obliged to apply to his brother. It seemed to me it was Sussex and Lady Buggin’s private affair. Sofy’s business was Tommy Garth.
I said, ‘Just a little money, Sofy. It would make all the difference.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You keep telling me so, but things are difficult at present. Major Conroy says I’m over-extended.’
‘But how can you be?’ I asked her. ‘You never buy anything.’
And at that moment her hearing failed her, as it did more and more frequently whenever a disagreeable question was asked.
Eighteen thirty-one was a strange unsettled year. Times were changing and I began to feel old. All the talk was of voting reform, and more than once the House of Commons approved the Bill only to have the Lords reject it, and at every reversal windows and heads got broken. Agitators were hanged and rioters were transported and not only in London. Every city seemed to be coming to the boil. The papers said the only thing for it was for His Majesty to create a great number of new peers, forward-thinking men who could be relied upon to vote the Bill in before the country burst into flames.
The King hesitated to do it, though he wasn’t averse to ennobling Dora Jordan’s children. His oldest boy became the Earl of Munster and was summoned to be an aide-de-camp. The middle boy was given command of the royal yacht, the youngest was promoted colonel in the Foot Guards, and the daughters, who had all made advantageous marriages, were raised to the rank of a marquess’s daughter. The coronation, when it eventually took place, was a sober affair. There were no newly woven carpets, no cloth of gold or borrowed jewels, and no banquet. This was good for business at the Pink Lemon, for while the King and Queen went back to Clarence House for a plain roasted chicken every hostess in London gave a seated dinner in honour of the occasion.
Sofy was out of town. Elizabeth’s long-threatened visit from Homburg had finally begun. She was staying with Augusta and Sofy had gone to Frogmore to see her so I was free of any obligations on Coronation Day. I went with Annie and Robert and their Rose Street pupils to Whitehall to see the King and Queen ride by on their way to the abbey.
‘This is Mrs Buzzard,’ Robert told the children. ‘In her lifetime Mrs Buzzard has seen three kings. Who can name the two who came before King William?’
They all could. They knew their Georges. But they gazed at me like I was Methuselah.
I said, ‘Not only that, Mr Clearwell. I’ve been in the presence of every one of their Majesties and their Queens and spoken with them too.’
Those children looked at me as though I was one of the wonders of the world.
I said, ‘And who will reign over us next, after King William? Who knows that?’
That had them thinking. One little lad ventured, ‘The King’s boy?’
Annie said, ‘The King doesn’t have a son, nor a daughter. No, it will be Princess Victoria. When her uncle King William dies we shall have a queen.’
It was comical to listen to them chewing over that. The boys thought the King had better get himself a son and quickly, the girls thought a queen was an excellent idea. The procession, such as it was, left me feeling flat. I’m no lover of extravagance but I wished the Majesties had put on a little more show for those children. A fat old man in an admiral’s uniform, a lady in a plain white gown and grubby diamonds. Where was the majesty in that?
Sofy returned from Windsor scandalized at the size of Elizabeth.
‘Every bit as fat as Royal,’ she said. ‘She puffs and wheezes. How do they allow themselves to grow so big? She’s as sweet-natured as ever, but what do we have to say after all this time? Nothing at all. Augusta will soon find her too confining. You know how Gusta loves to go for vigorous walks and Elizabeth can’t take a step without her cane. I suppose we shall all be expected to take our turn at entertaining her. Well, let her go to Minny first. Perhaps by then she’ll be homesick for Homburg.’
But Elizabeth stayed on and on, into the spring of ’32. Then events in London made her long for the peace of her little German kingdom. The House of Lords rejected the Reform Bill yet again and there was rioting such as we hadn’t seen since the days of poor Queen Caroline. Many people closed up their town houses and went into the country and there was a week when the banks ran out of ready money. Ernie Cumberland was pelted with mud when he came to town to vote and Cumberlands made of straw and rags were burned on a few street fires too, or so I heard, and Wellington and any other Lord who opposed manhood suffrage. Annie, who attended meetings and read pamphlets put out by Mrs Wheeler, had become a very advanced thinker and believed that the Bill went nothing like far enough, that women should have the vote too. Her father used to laugh at her.
He’d say, ‘And dogs and horses. Why should they be left out? Then the kitchen cat’ll start agitating.’
Sally despaired of her. She said, ‘She’ll end an old maid. What man is going to want her, spouting off her silly ideas?’ But I never worried about Annie. For one thing, Robert Clearwell encouraged her in her thinking and he loved the ground she walked on, and for another, there are worse fates in life than being an old maid. Minny Gloucester could have attested to that, rattling back and forth between Bagshot and Piccadilly to make sure of always just missing her husband.
In June the Reform Bill was passed, by a squeak, and perhaps more out of the Lords’ fear of the alternative than of their being convinced of its rightness. So anyone in possession of a male member and property worth ten pounds had the vote and the country was pulled from the brink. The danger then was that women and other lowly beasts might commence agitating for the same. My Annie is convinced the day will come and though I shan’t live to see it, I hope she’s right. Women have run behind men with a bucket and broom long enough. It seems only fair they should have their turn at making a mess of the world.
39
As Sofy’s eyes grew cloudier and sewing became impossible she decided she would embark on a programme of intellectual improvement, and that I should join her. She had Mrs de la Motte come in twice a week to read to her from Marivaux but as I hadn’t a word of French I made it my business always to be occupied on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays Herr Krause was asked to come in to improve our German and I decided I would take up that challenge, though Sofy and I were starting from very different places. She knew a little of the Hochdeutsch her mother had spoken and her brothers had been obliged to learn; I remembered only my parents’ mix of Low Saxon and Brabant Dutch. Still, Herr Krause did the best he could with us, and what we lacked in grammatical correctness we made up for with merciless impersonations of my papi and the Illustrious Personage. Gus Sussex’s wife, Cissie, heard our laughter and said she had half a mind to join us, we seemed to have so much fun.
I went to Kensington one afternoon and found Herr Krause leaving, our lesson cancelled, and John Conroy barring my way.
‘Her Royal Highness,’ he said, ‘is with the eye doctor.’ Sofy had woken that morning completely blind in one eye.
I said I would wait. Conroy said in all likelihood the surgeon would couch the eye there and then and Sofy wouldn’t be well enough to receive anyone.
I said, ‘Nevertheless I shall wait. I’ve been with Princess Sofy through every infirmity since she was eleven years old. Every infirmity.’
He took my meaning well enough.
He said, ‘If you insist. Though I can’t be answerable for how long that wait may be.’
I said, ‘Of course. I understand your position perfectly, Major. What you are answerable for and what you are not. I wonder though, with your great influence, that you can’t ensure something is done for Captain Garth.’
‘I believe Herbert Taylor deals with that person,’ he said. ‘He does. Except nothing is ever done. The Captain’s situation is very bad. I’ve seen it for myself. A sum of money was agreed that has never been paid, and as you seem to hold the key to the coffers you must surely be answerable for that. Her Royal Highness tells me she’s out of funds and yet I can’t remember the last time she ordered a new gown. She did mention properties she thought of buying, but I think it was a passing fancy. She has no need of houses. She rarely stirs from this apartment. And anyway, I never saw her put her name to anything. Well, you would know. So I think she must certainly have sufficient to help Captain Garth in his distress. Unless some unscrupulous rogue has robbed her. But of course that could never be, when she has you guarding her affairs so carefully.’
There was nothing to be read in his face, though he had a ruddy Irish flush on his cheeks. I had made my point but we both knew I was powerless. He was in thick with Vicky Kent and Sofy, and Cissy Sussex was half in love with him too. Well, every dog has his day and John Conroy didn’t waste a moment of his.
