Perdita's Prince: (Georgian Series) (31 page)

‘You are displeased?’

‘No, no. I had thought in the beginning that she might have carried some influence, but I see she carries none.’

‘So it is of no interest to you whether the affair continues or not?’

He shook his head and was thoughtful. Perdita was a most desirable woman, but doubtless he himself would be interested in her for no more than a very short time – but for that short time he would be definitely intrigued. He was rather amused by the manner in which she acted her way through life and would have liked to discover a little of the real woman beneath; but it would probably not be worth the trouble. No, it was not very important that the affair should continue, except of course that if the Prince gave Perdita her congé, there would be another – and perhaps someone who might influence him.

He answered: ‘Perhaps on the whole it is better that it should continue a little longer.’

Mrs Armistead nodded. She would do her best to keep it going. Mr Fox would understand that but for her prompt action this afternoon there could have been disaster.

He did understand. He could trust her. It was interesting how they could work together.

She told him about the house in Chertsey. He knew, of course,
how she had earned the money which had bought it. He advised her about her affairs which he was well able to do in spite of the fact that his own were in disorder.

‘Why, Lizzie, you are a woman of property.’ And he did not speak slightingly but with admiration.

He talked of the American situation with her for it was very much in his thoughts. He believed that if the Colonies were lost it could bring down the Government.

She listened, made intelligent comment, and later spent an affectionate hour in his company.

The Queen plots

NEWS OF THE
life the Prince was leading came in time to the George … young George … little more than a boy and keeping King’s ears. He could not sleep at night for thinking of it. a play actress! The King’s mind went back to the days when he himself was eighteen. He thought of that establishment in which he had set up Hannah, where their children were born. But it was discreet. No one knew. It was wrong, it was foolish, and he deeply repented it; but it was
discreet.
That was the first quality a prince who would be king must acquire. It was not generally known about his affair with Hannah, although it had been rumoured and whispered of here and there. This was different. This was blatant. Going out together … her in her carriage … painted like a harlot – although the women in the Prince’s set all did the same. Rouge and white lead, bah! Didn’t they know it stopped up the pores and caused consumption?

And the company he kept. That was the real source of trouble! He was a frequent visitor at Cumberland House. Nothing he could have done could have been more designed to flout his father. To go … as soon as a little freedom was granted him … to that hotbed of Whiggery which was in complete opposition to
everything his father stood for. To choose
them
as his friends. If it had been the Gloucesters it would have been different. But it was not. It was Cumberland, that lecher who had made a scandal with Grosvenor’s wife – Cumberland and that woman with her eyelashes. George must have set out deliberately to defy his father.

He summoned Gloucester to Kew and told him of his anxieties.

‘You’ve heard, of course,’ he said.

‘The whole town is talking of it,’ replied Gloucester. ‘He’s there every other night. Sometimes with his play actress, sometimes without her. He’s constantly in the company of Fox and Sheridan.’

‘Rogues, both of them. Fox would do anything to plague me. As for Sheridan, he’s a drunkard and a lecher and I think it the greatest shame that he should have married that charming Miss Linley.’ The King’s eyes clouded momentarily with sentiment. ‘I shall never forget hearing her sing in an oratorio. Never heard singing like it. Sang like an angel, looked like an angel. I’m sorry to see her married to a fellow like that.’

‘They say he’s talented. I heard it said that on the first night of his
School for Scandal
a journalist passing the theatre ran for his life because he thought the thunder of the applause would bring the roof down.’

‘Bah! Pandering to the senses! Low taste. The man’s a drunkard and a gambler and he and Fox are teaching George to be the same.’

‘What are you going to do about it?’

‘What can I do? The young dog’s eighteen. They say that’s the time for a little independence. Fox, Sheridan, Cumberland … Cumberland most of all.’

‘I wonder you allow them to meet.’

‘I don’t care to part relations.’

Gloucester looked surprised considering the manner in which he – as well as Cumberland – had been kept from their nephews and nieces for so many years. But old George was behaving oddly nowadays; one could never be sure of him.

The King began to pace up and down, his face growing scarlet.

‘What would you have me do in my present distress?’ he demanded. ‘Eh, what? If I attempt to put a stop to this I shall drive
my son further and further into the arms of the opposition. And that would increase my distress.’

Gloucester agreed that taking into account the Prince’s age and the freedom he had already had it would be difficult to intervene now. Perhaps if he had not been so rigorously controlled beforehand he would not have rushed so madly into freedom. But he did not distress his brother still further by telling him this.

‘He comes to see you, I suppose?’ said the King.

‘Not often.’

‘But he is fond of you?’

‘Yes, I think so. But when I have tried to remonstrate with him he has hinted that he does not care to be preached at.’

‘You see. You see. What can you do with such a young dog? Tell me that, eh, what?’

‘It may be that after a while he will grow less wild.’

‘Less wild! Less wild! I hear that he is beginning to talk like that woman … that coarse creature with the eyelashes. I hear that he drinks to excess … that he has actually been carried home to that place where he lives with the actress. A pleasant story to be set about the Prince of Wales.’

‘Many princes have behaved in similar fashion,’ soothed Gloucester.

‘I won’t have my sons doing it. I won’t, I say. But how can I stop it? Tell me that, eh, what?’

The Duke of Gloucester could give no answer. ‘I fear Cumberland may be attempting to blackmail me into receiving that woman of his,’ went on the King.

‘Well,’ retorted the Duke of Gloucester, speaking for his own Duchess, ‘she is after all a member of the family.’

‘Eyelashes, bah!’ said the King.

*

When Gloucester left he went to see the Queen. She was a little worried about the health of the baby, for young Alfred had not picked up as her older children had and as little Octavius had never really been strong there were new anxieties in the nurseries.

She was sitting in her drawing room at her embroidery, her snuff box beside her, some of her women with her, contented
apart from her anxiety about her family, to be staying at ‘dear little Kew’.

She gave the order for dismissal because she saw at once from the King’s expression that he was upset and she knew that if he talked too quickly or incoherently some of these women would gossip about it, so she took every opportunity of keeping them out of the King’s way.

She did not have to ask what was wrong. She guessed the American Colonies might have something to do with it, but he would not of course come here to discuss those with her. She was supposed to be unaware that any conflict was taking place. If she had offered an opinion it would have been received with cold surprise. She had grown accustomed to this, and only resented it now and then.

But the family was a different matter. So it was family affairs of which he had come to speak.

‘The baby?’ he asked.

‘As well as we can expect. He grows a little stronger each day, I think.’

‘I’m glad of that. And Octavius? Eh! What?’

‘He has had a little cold but it is better,’ soothed the Queen.

Now to the subject which had brought him here; George, Prince of Wales.

‘It’s young George,’ he said.

The Queen put her hand involuntarily to her heart.

‘Up to his tricks,’ went on the King. ‘Gambling, drinking and keeping a play actress.’

‘No!’ cried the Queen.

‘But I say it is so and something will have to be done about it. He’ll have to be taught his duties to the state, to his family … eh? what?’

‘There are always people to gossip … to lie … about us.’

‘These are not lies. I’ve heard from too many sources. He’s wild. He’s set this woman up in a house … He lives there with her. His friends are my enemies. Fox is always with him. He goes to Cumberland and that woman of his. He’s with the Whigs … he’s with the Opposition. His bosom friends are the people I most dislike. He does it to spite me, eh, what?’

‘A play actress,’ murmured the Queen. ‘George with a play actress.’

‘I’m afraid our son is too fond of women.’

The Queen was silent.

‘If that were all … I’d understand.’ The King seemed as though he were talking to himself. ‘Young man … hot blood. It happens now and then. They grow out of it … become sober …’ He looked at Charlotte with her big mouth and her lack of eyelashes. They do their duty, are faithful to the wives that are chosen for them … But he has deliberately gone to Cumberland. My brother is teaching him to despise everything that I wish him to respect. That’s what is happening to the Prince of Wales and what am I going to do about it, eh, what?’

The Queen did not know. She wanted to soothe him, to stop him talking too rapidly. She knew her son well enough to realize that if his father tried to direct his actions he would be more rebellious than ever.

And as the King walked up and down murmuring half sentences to himself she was more concerned for him than for her son. Loving young George she believed that there was nothing really wrong with him. He was a little wild, it was true. But he would grow out of that. The fact was that he was so attractive that he could not help being the centre of attraction, but he would settle down.

She was a little worried about the play actress, though. That was the woman who had made a scene at the Oratorio when George had attracted so much attention by staring at her.

She sighed. But young men would be young men and until they found a wife for him he must she supposed have a mistress.

She wished though that he would choose some good quiet young woman – someone at Kew so that he could call and see his mother often – and perhaps confide in her.

She had to prevent the King becoming too excited and she said something of this to him.

‘Young men will be young men. They must not be judged too harshly.’

And oddly enough this did seem to soothe. Then she suggested a little walk or a drive in the carriage round ‘dear little
Kew which I know Your Majesty loves as much as I do.’

This was indeed a success, for he agreed to go. It was so pleasant riding in Kew, for the place was like a little village with the houses round the Green which were occupied by the children’s governesses and tutors, the ladies-in-waiting, doctors and gardeners. ‘
Dear
little Kew,’ murmured the Queen; and the King echoed her sentiments, for to him this little world seemed far from the ceremonies of St James’s or Buckingham House; and here George was the Squire – the benevolent landlord, beloved of his tenants. Farmer George, in fact, who delighted in the people who came out of their cottages to curtsey and pull a forelock as he and the Queen rode by.

The river flowed peacefully by and there on Strand-on-the-Green the Queen saw Mrs Papendieck about to go into the painter Zoffany’s house where she had lodgings, but when she heard the royal carriage she turned and curtsied; the King raised his hat and inclined his head. He liked Mrs Papendieck and Charlotte could see that he was forgetting his troubles momentarily, as she had intended he should.

*

The Queen thought a great deal about the play actress, trying to remember what she looked like. She recalled the performance of
The Winter’s Tale
in which the woman had played Perdita. What a pity they had ever gone to see that play! But then they would have seen something else and it would probably have been another play actress.

If only he could have found a
nice
lady – not an actress. There had been Mary Hamilton to whom he had been devoted and had written charming letters and looked upon as a sister. And that had taken him often to his sister’s apartments and no one could say that wasn’t a good thing! But a play actress! Suppose he had fallen in love with someone in the Queen’s household and it was all very discreet. The Prince would visit his mother often – and that could do nothing but good.

How pleasant if he would break this association with the play actress and find a kind, clever and above all
discreet
lady in his mother’s household.

*

At the Queen’s robing Madam von Schwellenburg was ordering the women to do this and that in her hectoring manner.

Charlotte had been helped on with her gown and her powdering robe was being put about her. While her hair was being dressed she read the newspapers and looked for references to the Prince and Mrs Perdita Robinson. She always tried to keep these from the King.

She was well aware that her women discussed this matter; in fact she believed that the whole Court was discussing it.

Perhaps she should ask Schwellenburg. Not that she wanted to talk of it, but at least Schwellenburg was German and she would be honest. She never chose her words with much care and would be as outspoken to the Queen as to anyone else.

While her hair was curled and crimped she was thinking of the women of her household. It would have to be someone young and there was no one young. It would have to be someone beautiful and there was no one really beautiful … at least not that a young boy of eighteen would think so; and most important of all
discreet.
The trouble was that people who possessed youth rarely had discretion and vice versa.