Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill: (Georgian Series) (35 page)

But this was a happy evening, with the gentlemen all paying attention to Fanny – and in particular Colonel Digby – and the conversation running on the Prince’s imminent visit.

Colonel Goldsworthy of course knew all the gossip, and Colonel Manners told some amusing stories about the Prince’s exploits and Colonel Digby was flirting to such an extent with Fanny that she really thought that he might be considering making a proposal of marriage.

It was all most diverting.

Colonel Goldsworthy was warning Fanny what she must expect when winter came to Windsor.

‘Ah, you are well enough now, Miss Burney, in your lilac tabby and your little jacket, but wait until the autumn. There is enough wind in these passages to carry a man o’ war. So on no account attend early prayers after October. You’ll see Her Majesty and the Princesses and all their attendants soon start to cough and sniffle and then … one by one they disappear. You’ll find that after November not a soul goes to the chapel but the King and the parson and myself. And I only go because I have to. I’ll swear it’s the same with the parson.’

‘So His Majesty is the stoic, Miss Burney,’ Colonel Manners added.

‘I am sure His Majesty would always do his duty.’

‘Even to letting the whole family perish with the cold.’

‘They seem to have survived a great many winters, Colonel Manners. But I do declare it must be most trying if one wished to sneeze in the royal presence.’

‘That one must never do, Miss Burney. It is forbidden.’

‘What happens if one does sneeze? A sneeze will on occasions creep on one unawares.’

‘Is that so, Miss Burney? Is there not a slight tickle in the nose … a few warnings? They do say that if the forefinger is placed under the nose, so, and the breath held, the sneeze can be suppressed.’

‘Oh dear, I do hope that if I ever feel a need to sneeze I shall remember that.’

Colonel Digby said that if he were at hand she need only ask him. His finger was always available to be applied beneath Miss Burney’s charming nose.

Fanny giggled. ‘But Colonel Digby, how could I
warn
you in time?’

‘Never mind. Should you commit this most serious offence I should take the blame.’

‘Colonel Digby, you are too good.’

His eyes were fervent. Oh dear, thought Fanny, what a good thing we are not alone … or is it?

Then Colonel Digby asked Fanny what she was reading and the conversation turned to literary matters which did not please the others; so Colonel Manners talked of the King and the coming visit of the Prince in order to lure Miss Burney and Colonel Digby from the subject which interested them both so much. If he did not, he knew that in a short time they would be talking about Dr Johnson and James Boswell and the literary set of which Fanny had been a member until she came to Court.

‘They’ll never understand each other,’ Colonel Manners was saying. ‘You wait, H.R.H. won’t be in the Lodge more than an hour or so before the fur starts to fly. Like to take a bet on it, Digby? What about you, Manners?’

‘Make your bets,’ said Digby. ‘I’ll give them a few weeks. But both of them will be on their best behaviour for a while, at any rate.’

‘Is it possible?’ asked Manners.

‘Mr Pitt’s orders,’ added Goldsworthy. ‘His Highness has to be grateful for his windfall; somewhere in the region of £200,000, I’ve heard. Wouldn’t you expect affability for that? As for His Majesty, well as I said, he has had his instructions. Family devotions is the order of the day.’

‘Can they keep it up?’ asked Manners.

‘They’ll manage … for a while. The King is a stoic.’

Goldsworthy cut in: ‘You’ve no idea. Why, yesterday I was hunting with His Majesty. He doesn’t spare himself … nor his attendants. There we were trotting … riding … galloping. The er … I beg your pardon, I fear, Miss Burney, but I was going to say a strange word. The er … perspiration … was pouring from us so that we were wet through, popping over ditches and jerking over gates from eight in the morning till five or six in the afternoon. Then back to the Lodge, looking like so many drowned rats with not a dry thread among us, nor a morsel within us, sore to the bone and … forced to smile all the time. And then His Majesty offered me refreshment. “Here, Goldsworthy,” he said, “have a little barley water, eh, what?” And there was His Majesty taking his barley water from a jug fit for a sick room … the sort of thing, Miss Burney, you would find on a hob in a chimney for some poor miserable soul who keeps his bed.’

They were all laughing, visualizing Goldsworthy’s discomfiture.

‘And what do you think,’ went on the garrulous Colonel, ‘the Prince of Wales will say if he is offered
barley water
?’

They were all laughing. And that was how it was on those evenings when Fanny was mistress of the tea table and Schwellenburg delighted them all by her absence.

And soon they, like everyone else at Windsor, were back to the subject of the Prince of Wales.

All the way to Windsor the Prince was thinking of Maria as he drove his phaeton at frantic speed to relieve his feelings. With any other woman he would not have worried. Well, with any other woman it would not have been of vital importance. But he had not seen Maria since she had closed her doors on him and he was getting desperate.

Now he had to go through this silly farce of reunion. As if there ever could be a true reunion? As if he and his father could ever agree, or see anything from the same point of view. The King was an old bigot, a silly old despot without even the strength and the power to be one. He had no taste for art; and the only culture he possessed was for music; and even that was mainly confined to Handel.

God help me! thought the Prince. What will it be? Evenings of Handel; lectures on the duty of princes; a game or two of backgammon; the dullest conversation in the world; services in that freezing chapel; more lectures on princes who must not act so as to be talked about; diatribes about Mr Fox, Mr Sheridan and the Whigs; more on the virtues of Mr Pitt and the Tories.

And Maria? Where was Maria? What if she attempted to leave the country? He had given orders that he was to be told at once if she proposed any moves like that. He had given instructions that close watch was to be kept on her.

How happy he would be if he were driving out to Richmond instead of Windsor … if only Maria, beautiful, desirable Maria were waiting for him instead of his doddering old father, his stupid mother and his simpering sisters. Well, perhaps he was wrong to condemn the Princesses. He had nothing against them. They, poor creatures, were what they were because they were forced to live like nuns in a convent. Poor Charlotte – twenty-one, she must be. His Maria had had two husbands before she was that age. Not that he cared to think about Maria’s previous husbands, except of course that it was her experiences which had made her the mature and fascinating creature she was – and of course they had both been older than she was and must have been dull creatures compared with her third – the Prince of Wales.

Her third husband … that was the point!

Would she ever forgive him? What could he do? Sherry must help him. It was no use calling on Fox. She hated Fox more than ever and who could wonder at it? Really Charles had gone too far!

And here was Windsor and why was it not Marble Hill and how could he live without Maria? She must come back to him. Something must be done … or he would have no wish to live.

The King received him formally, the Queen beside him. The Princesses were lined up and presented to him as though he had never met them before.

The girls clearly adored him; it was obvious in their faces. Not so the King and Queen.

He could see the irritation he always provoked; it was apparent in the King’s bulging eyes and the twitching of his brows; and the Queen’s resentment was there too. She wanted to be part of his rich and exciting life. As if that were possible!

But there was a pretence of affability; and later he attended a drawing room which was very public; many of his own attendants were present and the King chatted to him most of the time to show the company that all was well between them.

But all was not well, thought the Prince. It was some months since he had seen the King and it might have been that he was therefore more aware of the change than those who saw him every day.

By God, he thought, the old man’s changed. He talks too much and the repetition is greater than it used to be. He seems to lose the thread of what he’s saying. What does it mean?

He wished that Fox were available so that he could report to him. If the King were going to be … ill, that could present a new and dazzling prospect. He wondered whether Pitt had noticed the alarming changes in his father.

Yet even with such a prospect before him he could think of little but Maria. He would know no peace until he had explained to her that the fault was not his. Charles James Fox had gone too far. That must be his theme.

Maria must come back to him. Whatever the world thought, to him she would always be his wife.

So he went through the farce of friendship with the King; he was affable to the Queen; he talked to the Princesses, noticed that Charlotte was inclined to be bandy, thought what dull creatures they were – but then all women were dull when compared with Maria – and then was sorry for them because they would be prisoners for longer than he had been. He at least had made a part escape at the age of eighteen when he had set up Perdita Robinson in Cork Street.

He thought of those days with pity. Had he really believed himself in love with Perdita? How could any emotion he
would ever feel compare with his love for Maria? And Maria had left him … sworn she would never see him again.

So there he was back at Maria.

As soon as he could conveniently leave Windsor he was on his way back to London, to write to Maria, to appeal to Maria, to beg her, implore her to come back to him.

Maria would not see him. She was staying in the house of a friend who was also a distant connection of her family, the Honourable Mrs Butler, and with her was Miss Pigot – and both these ladies acted as her guardians.

The Prince called; alas, she would not see him. It was unprecedented. Who else but Maria would not be at home to the Prince of Wales? He stormed and raged; then he pleaded; but it was no use. Maria was not to be seen. What could he do?

He demanded to see Miss Pigot. She was an old friend of his as well as Maria’s and she told him at once that Maria had repeatedly said that she would not see him and there was nothing Miss Pigot could do to persuade her.

‘But she can’t mean it, dear Pig.’

Dear Pig assured him that she did.

‘I have never seen her so distressed, Your Highness, as she was when she heard what Mr Fox had said.’

‘But she knows Fox.’

‘Yes, but he spoke on Your Highness’s direct authority. That’s what broke her heart.’

‘Her heart broken. What about mine. Sheridan spoke well of her. Did she hear that.’

‘Oh yes, sir, she heard of it; and she was mollified to some extent, but it didn’t alter what Mr Fox had said.’

‘Dearest Pig, tell me what I can do to convince her that I adore her.’

‘Well, there’s only one thing, and it seems it’s the only thing you can’t do. Admit to the King and the Parliament and the world that she’s your wife.’

‘There’d be trouble … great trouble … if I did.’ He thought of the King as he had last seen him. That peculiar look which was sometimes in his eyes. What could it mean? Glittering possibilities! And what disasters could follow if he admitted to marriage?

‘She’s a Catholic, that’s the trouble.’

‘It’s a sad state of affairs, Your Highness. And it seems there’s no way out.’

‘Pig, you’ll do what you can for me?’

‘You can be sure I will.’

‘Remind her of what a good husband I’ve been to her, will you?’

‘She doesn’t need to be reminded, sir. She remembers … She says so.’

‘She says I’ve been a good husband?’ he asked eagerly.

‘Yes, right up to the time you denied you were.’

‘
I
did not. It was Fox. Oh, he went too far. There was no need to go as far as that.’

Miss Pigot shook her head at him sadly. ‘I’ll do my best. I talk to her, but at the moment it’s no use. If I saw that it was, you can trust me to let you know at once.’

‘Bless you, dearest Pig.’

‘I’ll tell her how downcast you are.’

‘Downcast! I’m broken-hearted. Honestly, Piggy, I shall do something desperate if she doesn’t come back to me.’

But although she told Maria, it was no use. Maria was adamant.

He had denied he was married to her; and if that ceremony had not been a solemn one to him, then her conscience would not allow her to live with him as his wife.

The Prince was very ill. He suffered a violent paroxysm and had to be bled almost to the point of danger. Rumours spread through the Court that he was seriously ill.

Miss Pigot brought them to Maria. She looked at her friend and mistress sadly.

‘He has brought this on himself because you won’t see him,’ she said.

‘He is too violent,’ said Maria. ‘He should learn to control his feelings.’

‘Perhaps they are too strong to be controlled.’

‘They weren’t strong enough for him to claim me as his wife.’

‘Oh, Maria, are you not a little hard on him? Consider his position. He could lose the throne.’

‘I told him that many times. I told him to consider carefully.
You know I went abroad to escape him but he would not have that.’

‘He loves you, Maria. You forget that.’

‘I do not forget that he loves me in this way …’

‘In such a way that he is brought near to death because of you.’

‘You are a good advocate, Piggy. Has he asked you to plead his cause?’

‘I speak as I see,’ said the blunt Miss Pigot. ‘And I see this, Maria: If he admitted he was married to a Catholic he would have put the succession in danger. There might even be a war. Have you ever thought of that? You say you love him; he says he loves you. He cannot give up his crown. There is too much involved. It is like asking you to give up your religion. Why should all the sacrifice be on one side?’