George Mills (56 page)

“There was a sort of conference to which I was invited. There weren’t even barristers there, only a sort of solicitor from the Customs Office whom they’d rounded up at the last minute.

“The solicitor asked if I had reached my twenty-fifth birthday when I had been secretly married. He asked if I had obtained my father’s consent. Then Mrs. Fitzherbert—he called her Mrs. Fitzherbert—was not my wife, was she? It was ’is opinion, the solicitor said, that the hact of 1701 was not even happlicable.
The act did not have to be enforced because under the very provisions of the rule the marriage was regarded as invalid!
Law squalid and stinky as secret passageway. Dodge and diddle law, gull and bubble precedent.

“ ‘They call you Mrs. Fitzherbert,’ I told her.

“ ‘Do they?’ Maria said. ‘How very odd. It’s divorce Catholics don’t recognize, not death.’

“I built the safe house in Putney one year after the year they did not even bother to dissolve our marriage. It’s an out-of-the-way sort of place, and the house itself is not much different from its neighbors. As you see it backs on the river. We came ashore in rowboats now, dugouts. We were probably seen. But ordinary people don’t much gossip about the great. They don’t know anything to say. As for the rest, the ruling classes, they know it all but are discreet. They talk behind our backs but only amongst themselves.

“We lived on and off here several years. We were very happy.

“A prince’s credit is long, but it is not infinite. There were debts. There are always debts. It’s empty now, but once this house was furnished like a palace. I did not buy, I commissioned. The greatest cabinetmakers worked for us, the greatest sculptors, the finest painters. One room was floored and walled and ceilinged entirely in delft. Josiah Wedgwood made our plates and pottery following Maria’s sketches. Dick Sheridan wrote comedies using plots I myself suggested. I discovered a young woman in Bath, Jane Austen, and commissioned her to write novels for us. We gave her a general idea of the subject matter and the tone we were interested in and she fleshed out the rest. We sat on the finest furniture to be had in Europe and read aloud to each other. Delightful, delightful.

“Only our bedroom would have seemed eccentric. It was fitted out, as you may have guessed, like a dairy. The mattress and pillows were stuffed with ordinary hay, which we changed daily. I even had lovely little Chippendale milking stools made for us. Well. It was
all
delightful.

“And expensive. The bills mounted, though I was able to stall my creditors for a time on the basis of my great expectations. Then, suddenly, all together all at once it seemed, they began to hound me, coming not to Buckingham House but directly to Putney. Even Miss Austen, though I must say that of them all she was the shyest and seemed quite embarrassed to be here.

“I was not even sent for this time. I arranged for the meeting and went to the ministers myself.

“ ‘The King is not improved,’ the Chancellor of the Exchequer said.

“ ‘Isn’t it time you began to cast about for a suitable consort?’ the Lord Chancellor asked.

“ ‘You’re Prince Royal now. You may yet be Prince Regent before you’re King,’ the PM said.

“ ‘What is your view, counselor?’ asked the Lord Privy Seal.

“ ‘Oh
my
view,’ he said. ‘Hi wouldn’t ’ave no proper view now, would hi? My view’s strickly the law. The law’s what
hi
go by. It wants a hagreement.’ This from the Custom’s Office solicitor.

“ ‘What does?’ the Prime Minister asked.

“ ‘Why the law does, your honor. It wants a hagreement. What we call a tort, a contrack.’

“ ‘But isn’t a tort…’ I started to ask.

“ ‘It’s like this, i’n’t it? Law’s a hagreement entered into voluntarily by two parties. Hi except ’ighway robbery and murder and such because that hain’t law so much has what we call
broken
law. Now the Prince ’ere comes to us game as you please hand wants us to push some bill through Parliament to pay off ’is debts. Now if we was to do hit hit might be what we call a
favor
but hit wouldn’t be law. Not
proper
law. Dere’s no quo for the quid, if you gavver my meanin’. It wants a hagreement. Now, if ’e was to
marry…
’

“They did not get their agreement.

“The creditors came. They came with bailiffs and bum-bailiffs, with beadles and tipstaffs, with sheriffs and constabulary, process servers, catchpolls and Bow Street runners. I could see the Lord Chancellor and the solicitor off by themselves in a carriage parked behind a string of removal vans.

“To give them their due, the creditors seemed almost as shy as Miss Austen and, with the removal men, went quietly about their work. Silently the delft room was dismantled. Silently the Wedgwood was collected, the furniture. Sheridan was there and tried to make me a gift of the plays I’d commissioned. There was consultation among the constabulary and process servers who then sent one of the runners out to speak to the Lord Chancellor’s carriage. When the man returned, he whispered something to a policeman who came over to Sheridan who then turned to me and shrugged helplessly.

“ ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Sheridan said.

“ ‘It’s all right, Dick,’ I told him, and handed over his manuscripts. ‘We’ve read the plays. They’re wonderful plays. We’ll remember them always.’

“ ‘Oh we will, Richard. We will,’ Maria said.

“ ‘As for the rest of you,’ I called, ‘one day I shall be King. I’ll not forget what you’ve done to us this day. You, draper, and you, cabinetmaker, can forget all about your By Appointment to His Majesty crest. All of you can.’

“For reply they looked down listlessly at their feet and seemed to shuffle apologetically.

“For some reason they didn’t enter the bedroom and left it intact.

“ ‘They’ve left us all we really need, sweetheart,’ I told Maria.

“ ‘Oh yes,’ she said and we went there and I sucked at her dry breasts and somehow they were moist now and what I sipped tasted like tears.

“Well,” King George said. “It was the following year. This would have been thirty-three years ago. It was my birthday. I wouldn’t be Regent for eighteen more years, King for another twenty-eight. It was my birthday. The house was furnished now with some of Maria’s things from Pangbourne; the rest came from her house in Richmond. There were crosses on the walls. It was my birthday. We had always exchanged gifts. Though I was still in debt—princes and good time Charlies are never out of it it seems—I was not borrowing so much now since being humiliated by the creditors. I had given her some small thing, I don’t even remember now what it was. She looked at me for a moment and went over to her writing desk, where she sat down and appeared to write something out. It couldn’t have taken her more than a minute. When she had done she handed it to me. I looked at it and laughed.

“ ‘What’s this then?’ I said.

“ ‘A check.’

“ ‘Well I
see
it’s a check. Is that the sort of gift you’d give me on my birthday? A
check?
’

“ ‘Did you read it?’

“ ‘No.’

“ ‘Read it.’

“ ‘It’s for five hundred fifteen pounds, eight shillings.’

“‘Yes.’

“ ‘What an odd sum. Five hundred fifteen pounds, eight shillings. Maria, is this the amount you think will bring me out of debt? Darling, I owe thousands.’

“ ‘I know that.’

“ ‘Maria, I don’t want your money for a gift.’

“ ‘It isn’t a gift. I did not get you a gift.’

“‘What is it then?’

“ ‘The price you paid to have this house built.’

“ ‘You’re giving me my own house? Oh, darling, that’s very sweet but really I can’t…’

“ ‘He said I’d have to ask you for the title. He said if you don’t have it or it’s not handy you could write something down on a paper making it over to me.’

“ ‘
He
said? Who?’

“ ‘That solicitor,’ she said, and began to cry.

“I went to him that afternoon. He was not at the offices in Parliament, where all our other meetings had taken place. The Lord Chancellor told me I might look for him at the Customs House.

“It was a dirty, dingy building smelling of brine and brackish water, of filthy contraband and sodden wood. I found him shirt-sleeved in some petty clerk’s office.

“ ‘What’s this then?’ I demanded, waving the check at him.

“ ‘Ahh,’ he said, ‘did you sign hover the deed then, my prince?’

“ ‘No I didn’t sign over the deed. I’m trying to get some explana—’

“ ‘Well no matter,’ he said. ‘You’ve haccepted the money and in law that’s a principle that shows your hintent to make a hagreement.’

“ ‘
What are you talking about?
’

“ ‘Your own good, sir, your own good. You built that house in Putney in the year of our Lord 17 hand 86. This is 17 hand 92. That’s six years, Prince George.’

“ ‘Say what you’re talking about or I’ll kill you.’

“ ‘That wouldn’t be law, sir.’

“I went for his throat.

“ ‘Law, sir,’ he gasped. ‘Common law, sir. Common law marriage.’

“I took my hands from about his neck. ‘Common law marriage?’

“Because there is no law finally, there are only arrangements. They had used the Settlement Act to arrange my bachelorhood, a sort of biding, buttoned spinstership of standby, wait-list eligibility. And repossessed our household goods to arrange, or so I thought at the time, simple, hobbled, clip-wing, rub-and-bottleneck let and hindrance.

“ ‘Oh no, sir,’ the solicitor explained later, ‘that would have been vitchious. The law his not vitchious. We done that for the presumption. The law wants a hagreement hand a presumption. What reasonable men might hinfer has to da troof of your and Mrs. Fitz’s situation based on probable reasoning hin da absence huv, or prior to, hactual proof or disproof. If we’d let you ’ang on to the furniture, all them pricey, pretty penny harticles and hinventory what you’d put togevver, dere might be some reasonable man or huvver oo’d ’ave taken it into ’is ’ead that you’d hactually hintended to make ha ‘ome togevver hafter the fashion of a ’usband and wife.’

“ ‘You left the bedchamber undisturbed.’

“ ‘We did, sir. Hafter the fashion of a man wif a maid.’

“Maria’s check had been written to neutralize one more presumption. The solicitor explained that since I had paid for the house and lived with her in it I had seemed to imply that I regarded her as my wife. If they had not acted before the sabbatical year, our arrangement, under English common law, might have been considered a bona fide marriage. By getting her to pay for the house…

“ ‘I’ll tear up the check,’ I said, and did so, in a dozen dozen bits and pieces before the solicitor’s eyes.

“ ‘Oh, sir,’ he said sadly, ‘Hi’m afraid dat were not wise. You see, sir, you’re a debtor, and, hunder law, debtors are wiffout certain rights. Dey may not muterlate monies due deir creditors. ‘Hif a penny come deir way dat penny must be paid.’ Dat his de law, sir, so noble has your action was, befitting a sweet and noble prince like yourself, may I say, sir, it was not wise? Dough Hi ’ope an’ pray dat if Hi ’ad de honor, sir, to be hin your position Hi would ’ave done de same——if Hi was has hig’orant of de law as you are, Prince.’

“So we were undivorced and unannulled for the third time.

“We continued to meet for a time, but both of us could see that what all official England had contrived to turn into an affair was finally and effectively doomed. For one thing, now that Maria owned the house she wanted to redecorate the bedroom.

“Are you too uncomfortable on that bare floor? The remainder is quickly told.

“Now I had reason to borrow again. I had not realized how much money I had
not
been spending while Maria had been taking up so much of my time. Unattached, I began to resume some of my old pursuits. I was gambling again. There were fine new race horses to buy for my neglected stables. My appetites became again as grand as they’d been in my fledgling good time Charlie days. My wardrobe once more took on its old princely significance. And there was Brighton. There’d always been Brighton of course, but now I had begun once again to host the magnificent feasts and balls that had so distracted me when I was younger, affairs which for the most part Maria and I had attended as guests during the period of our closest alliance. So there were debts. And reason enough to seek out assistance.

“ ‘There’s that girl in Italy,’ the Chancellor of the Exchequer said.

“ ‘His cousin?’ the Lord Privy Seal said.

“ ‘Caroline,’ said the solicitor.

“This would have been thirty years ago. The marriage was contracted and I got my money.

“ ‘They’re forcing me to marry a woman I cannot care for.’

“ ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Maria said. ‘It’s death Catholics recognize, not divorce.’

“ ‘Don’t you see?’ I told the ministers. ‘You’ve made me a bigamist.’

“ ‘You’re Prince huv Wales, sir,’ the solicitor said. ‘Take has many mistresses has pleases you.’

“ ‘Caroline’s the mistress,’ I muttered.

“ ‘Queen Caroline his your consort, sir,’ the solicitor said. ‘When she comes to term England will ’ave han heir.’

“Heiress he should have said. Princess Charlotte was born the following year. I asked the queen to taste her milk, which otherwise would have just gone begging anyway. She quite refused. It couldn’t have been very good milk.

“ ‘One thing,’ I asked Maria when Caroline returned to Rome the year the Princess was born. ‘What pressures did they apply? Did they threaten the Catholics? How did they get you to do it?’

“‘Write the check?’

“ ‘Yes.’

“ ‘That solicitor explained it. It had been a prince’s house. The home of the man who would be King of England. He pointed out what a good investment it was.’

“ ‘Oh Maria,’ I cried.

“ ‘Oh George,’ she said, ‘it’s divorce Catholics don’t recognize, not reality.’

“This would have been almost twenty-nine years ago. The Young Pretender would have been dead eight years by this time. Did you say something, Mills? No? I thought you said something. Stuart eight years gone. Still, she would not have been entirely lonely in Italy, would she? Would she, Mills?

“
Now what’s all this about some damned squire’s letter you claim to carry about with you under your blouse?!
”