I said, ‘I wish I’d never agreed to write it. For two pins I’d throw it on the fire but Amelia never forgets a promise.’

‘Not on the fire,’ she said. ‘When I was about your age, in a fit of discontent I burned a bundle of my papers, and I soon regretted it. The back of a cupboard is a better place, then it can be taken out at some future date and improved. Of course, it may still deserve to end in the fire, but first allow it to live a little longer.’

She was gayer than I could ever have imagined. There was no hurry about her, no feeling that at any moment Mrs Schwelly might burst in and she would have to jump to her duties. She took my pages.

‘A beautiful, golden-haired princess beloved by everyone?’ she said. ‘I do see your difficulty. A disagreeable princess would have made a far more interesting study. But here are two useful lessons. Avoid being obliged to any patron, especially a royal one, and keep your writing close to your chest until you know you’ve done the best you can. Let anyone else read a word of it and it’s sure to end in pieces.’

She handed back my story without reading it, and said, ‘The world is full of editors and arbiters of literature. They’ll tell you precisely what’s wrong with your story and would write a far better one themselves if only they had the time. So the young Highnesses are going to Nuneham Courtenay instead of Kew. Are they pleased with the plan?’

‘No. What they really want is to go to the seashore with the King and Queen and I don’t understand why they’re not allowed. I’m sure Lady Harcourt wouldn’t mind. It must be a great inconvenience to receive royal visitors.’

But Miss Burney said it was a harness Lady Harcourt hardly felt, she’d worn it for so long, and that Sofy and Amelia might have a livelier time in Oxfordshire than they would at Weymouth because the Queen was quite out of sorts and was not to be fatigued.

I said, ‘Sofy doesn’t fatigue anyone. She’s so good and obedient. If the Duke of Clarence can go to Weymouth she could certainly go. Mrs Chevely says Billy Clarence’s language makes the Queen’s ladies blush and they all wish he might be given another frigate and orders to sail immediately.’

‘Ah,’ she said, ‘I think Mrs Chevely confuses the Duke’s boyish exuberance with vulgarity. Fortunately for His Royal Highness the Queen doesn’t fall into the same error. I’m told it takes a mother to understand the distinction.’

Miss Burney only ever laughed with her eyes.

She said, ‘But I must leave off gossiping. Her Majesty has been all consideration to me since I asked to leave my position. She’s settled a half-pay allowance on me when I truly had no reason to expect anything. And I believe she’s been thinking of you too, Cornelia. I hear you’re to receive a gift.’

‘A gift? From the Queen? What is it?’

She said, ‘I won’t say. But when you see it try to bear in mind it’s kindly meant. And about your story, Nellie. Perhaps there could be a dog that bites?’

We said goodbye and I saw her only once after that day. I should have liked to have had a better acquaintance with her. I know she survived many adventures and tribulations. And she was right about the Queen’s intention to make me a gift. On the morning of my departure Augusta and Elizabeth came from Upper Lodge and presented me with a bottle of Bloom de Ninon Guaranteed Complexion Whitener.

Mother would have had that bottle exhibited under a glass dome. It was brought out and showed to everyone who called on her, though they were not permitted to touch it. Tea parties were given and cake was made in its honour. I hadn’t realized what a large acquaintance Mother had until Queen Charlotte made a project of the port-wine mark that covers half of my face.

I said, ‘It can’t be kept forever. I shall have to use it. When I go to Windsor I shall be expected to wear it.’

Mother said, ‘But not ziss bottle, Nellie. Ziss is from der Qveen herself.’

And she gave me five shillings from her own pocket, to go to Harding Howell in Pall Mall and buy another bottle of ceruse.

7

Sofy’s birthdays were often tinged with melancholy. Perhaps it was the season. The trees were bare, the days were short. But in truth I think we were stalked by the spectre of ’88: the King’s terrible episode that announced itself at her birthday dinner that year.

Her fourteenth though was a little gayer. All the Royal Highnesses were in a state of great excitement. They had gained a sister. Frederick, Duke of York, had made a desirable match and was expected to arrive at any moment with his bride, Princess Frederica of Prussia. In Soho Square Miss Tod had already informed us that the new Duchess of York had a tiny waist, delicate feet and a dowry of thirty thousand pounds. When she finally got to London she was discovered to suffer from hauteur and rotten teeth, but if the Duke was willing to overlook these imperfections what was it to us? Parliament had settled another eighteen thousand a year on him to assist in her upkeep so I suppose she could have been without a tooth in her head and still worth the price.

People predicted that the happy improvements to the Duke of York’s finances would encourage the Prince of Wales to unmarry Mrs Fitzherbert and take a more suitable wife himself. He was said to be over his ears in debt, with banks brought down by loans he could not or would not repay. This made me a little anxious for Papi, but he assured me he only ever lent what he was willing to lose.

‘Viz Prince of Vales,’ he said, ‘der books iss balanced.’

By which he meant that the connection had brought him advantages worth more than the unpaid rent on Marine Pavilion. The lease was still Papi’s and remained so for many years. Not everyone came out of it so well as Papi though. Mr Weston the tailor still had to pay his cutters and pressers. The hatter and the saddle-maker still had to eat. And the Prince showed no sign of giving up Mrs Fitz and making a regular marriage. Indeed he was more and more at Brighton, and so, in consequence, was Papi.

I raised the subject with Sofy one afternoon when we had the schoolroom to ourselves. I am generally most resistant to boredom but the torpor of Windsor did sometimes tempt me into mischief.

I said, ‘I wonder who the Prince of Wales will marry?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I wonder. He has to choose very carefully, you know, for whoever he marries will be Queen some day.’ A queen, according to Sofy, needed a very particular constellation of traits. She must be noble, obviously, but not so elevated that she wouldn’t willingly submit to her king. Also she must be moderate in her opinions, of a contented nature and not meddlesome, strong enough to bear children, and pleasant to look at but not overly beautiful. Great beauty was apparently a suspect quality.

I said, ‘Of course first he must free himself of the wife he already has.’

‘Nellie!’ she said. ‘You can’t believe those silly stories.’

I said, ‘I know he dines with Mrs Fitzherbert every day when he’s in Brighton.’

‘That’s because he’s good and kind and she has no family.’

‘He can be good and kind and married to Mrs Fitz, and as a matter of fact I rather think he is. I suppose he did it without thinking of the consequences and now it must be very difficult to undo the muddle.’

‘But you’re wrong,’ she cried. ‘You’re wrong, wrong, wrong.’

And she was so emphatic that the muffin fell off the end of her toasting fork and into the fire.

In those days Sofy wouldn’t hear a word said against any of her brothers, not even Billy Clarence who had just credited a new scandal to his account: he had taken up residence with an actress.

Dora Jordan was the kind of woman not read about in decent houses so we had relied entirely on Miss Tod for our information. She hardly knew where to begin. Mrs Jordan, as the person styled herself, was Irish, and as if that wasn’t crime enough, had two children living but no ring on her finger. Worse yet, she appeared in theatricals in roles that required her to wink at the public and strut about the stage in close-fitting breeches.

Mother said, ‘Ach, der poor Qveen! How she must soffer. I senk Gott my boys did not liff to break mein heart. Nellie iss no trouble to me.’

My mother rarely paid me a compliment and when she did it was cleverly disguised.

Miss Tod said, ‘But Mrs Welche, we can comfort ourselves that the Duke of Clarence is of no importance to the life of the nation. We have Wales and York who go before him when we need another king.’

And so it did seem at the time, though I’ve lived to see Billy Clarence on the throne and Dora Jordan in a pauper’s grave in spite of the ten children she bore him. When the country begins to look for its next king an inconvenient wife may be cast off as easily as a pair of old stockings.

Sofy made her debut in the summer of 1792. She was given a very modest ball, befitting such a junior princess, but that did nothing to reduce her worries: could she delight society while keeping her gloves immaculate and balancing ostrich feathers on her head?

She said, ‘It was hateful, Nellie. Everyone looks at you. Be glad you’re excused such tortures.’

In fact my mother had had some fancy of bringing me out into society in a small way, but Papi had over-ruled her. He knew it would be money wasted. He knew that if they were ever to get me off their hands it would not be by means of a cotillion.

But Sofy’s new status brought some advantages. It meant that she and her Humble Companion were included in the annual visit to Weymouth and so, in late July, our carriage rolled out of Windsor at the start of a journey that should have taken no more than two days but, on account of being a royal journey, took five. We stopped first at Winchester, where children danced and hurrah’d us and the Majesties and the Princess Royal honoured the High Sheriff by staying a night at his manor house. The rest of us were put up in accommodations on Jewry Street, Augusta and Elizabeth sharing one room, Minny, Sofy and myself squeezed in with Amelia, who was an unexpected beneficiary of Sofy’s coming out. The King had said it would be too cruel to leave her alone at Windsor.

The next morning brought the first delay while the King’s fitness to go hunting was debated. To my eyes he seemed full of vigour. He no longer used a walking cane and his manner was brisk and hearty. But when hunting was proposed, with long hours in the saddle, Her Majesty foresaw over-exertion, sweats, chills and—well, who dare say what else. The royal physician hesitated, wanting neither to thwart his King nor anger his queen, and the King, putting his own interpretation on the doctor’s silence, turned south for Lyndhurst and his buckhounds. We turned west for Blandford Forum, which we reached at dusk after a teeth-rattling drive and fell into our beds.

Augusta came to us as we sat at breakfast. Her Majesty, who feared the jolting of the carriage had done her internal parts a great injury and so had need of perfect quiet and rest, wished the younger, noisier members of the party to proceed without her, but not directly to Weymouth. We were to go as far as Piddletown where she would join us, if she lived to see the day.

Sofy said, ‘Where’s Piddletown? Is it by the sea?’

Piddletown was not by the sea. But it did offer a suitable house where young girls might laugh and bang doors and talk all night without disturbing a more delicate person’s health. Ilsington House was the home of Major Garth, one of the King’s equerries. ‘Old Garth’, as Augusta called him, had recently returned from Jamaica, and it was evidently reckoned that his life as a soldier would have accustomed him to trials and discomforts far worse than the arrival of three Royal Highnesses, two governesses and a Humble Companion. A messenger had been dispatched at first light to advise the Major to expect us in time for dinner.

We arrived to find that Old Garth was away from home, attending His Majesty at Lyndhurst, but another message had been sent informing him of our taking over his house. Mrs Chaffey, his housekeeper, was beside herself with worry that we would find the beds insufficiently aired, the servants too countryfied and the river trout too meagre a supper. Minny, who was the senior Princess of our party, assured her we would be grateful to sleep on planks of wood and dine on bread and cheese. As for servants, we could perfectly well shift for ourselves, and to prove the point Miss Gomm said, ‘Indeed Mrs Chaffey, don’t trouble your man with the small portmanteaux. Nellie will bring them to us.’

Mrs Chaffey showed me the way through the back of the house. Its lawns were bathed in the last of the afternoon sun.