The storm we all longed for didn’t come until the next day. It rolled around all afternoon without reaching any great conclusion, and then in the evening came a different kind of thunderbolt. The King and Queen of France had been arrested. Minny heard it from a footman and hurried to tell us but she was soon silenced by Miss Gomm who said it would give Amelia the night terrors and must on no account be discussed. I had to wait until I was back in Soho Square to hear the story in full.
King Louis and his queen had left Paris in disguise, playing servants to their children’s governess who was got up as a grand Russian lady. Whether they had intended to flee the country entirely or just wished to escape the angry mood of Paris depended on who was telling the tale, but the sequence of events that undid them was generally agreed.
They had stopped for refreshment and a change of horses and the innkeeper had remarked to his wife how one face in the party was quite the double of a certain profile on a coin in his pocket. I imagine a great deal of whispering in the scullery.
‘Say something, Jacques.’
‘No, you say something.’
‘You’re the one who noticed it.’
In fact no one said anything and the royal party might have got clear away if their coachman hadn’t taken a bridge too fast and their carriage lost a wheel. Then, while they waited for a wheelwright to be found, news of the King and Queen’s flight reached the little town. Who was dressed first, the innkeeper or his wife? Or did they both run out of the house in their nightgowns, hearts pounding, racing to waken a justice of the peace and charge him with the unhappy duty of arresting his king and queen. Wretched man. He must have wished himself far, far away as much as the King did.
Miss Tod said there had to have been a traitor in the King’s household.
She said, ‘Dressed as a butler? Then why was his face observed so close? In a country inn, and by candlelight? No, they were betrayed, poor dears.’
Perhaps she was right. But I could see another way it might have happened. I could picture King George got up in Morphew’s greatcoat and periwig, and the Queen in Twyvil’s apron and cap. No one would suspect them as long as they kept their mouths closed, but there lay the difficulty. Any fool knows how to play a king, but few kings bother to study how ordinary men behave. One word from a royal mouth would have been enough to make that innkeeper look again at his guests.
It had been a foolish plan from first to last and it lost King Louis such friends as he still had. Some said it wasn’t his leaving Paris they disapproved of as much as his manner of going, sneaking away like a thief. Others said it was all of the Queen’s doing, which was a greater condemnation for it showed she was the one who wore the breeches. Whatever the truth of that, it had been very badly conceived.
At the beginning of August I was called back to Windsor. I was to spend a week there, then go on to Kew with Sofy and Minny and Amelia while the Majesties and the senior Princesses travelled to Weymouth for the waters. Then the plans changed. Minny was deemed old enough to join the Weymouth party and Sofy and Amelia were to go with Lady Harcourt to her home in Oxfordshire. So Sofy envied Minny, and Princess Elizabeth said she envied Sofy because Weymouth was boring, with nothing to do but walk on the strand or be rowed about the harbour by handsome, untouchable young oarsmen.
Humble Companions are taken up and put down as easily as dust sheets. No longer required for Kew, I was to be driven back to London as soon as Morphew could be spared to fetch me, and as I very much wished to speak to Miss Burney before I left, I walked across to Upper Lodge one afternoon. I knew that on any fine day the Queen was likely to be at the Frogmore cottage, botanizing with her gardener and Miss Burney might be free. She seemed very pleased to see me.
‘Cornelia Welche!’ she said. ‘You’ve come to say goodbye. How good you are.’
‘I expect to leave on Friday.’
‘Oh but I go tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Her Majesty has graciously released me.’
She was retiring from her court duties. One more day and I would have missed her.
I said, ‘So now you can be a writer again.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I believe I shall write another book but perhaps not yet. I’m going home to rest and be with my family. My health hasn’t been good this past year. But I see you haven’t been idle.’
I had with me a story I was working on for Amelia’s eighth birthday. Amelia had requested a book about a beautiful golden-haired princess, beloved by everyone, but I found I made little progress.
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.
