Goddess of the Green Room: (Georgian Series) (27 page)

was one comment. Another was:

‘A favourite comic actress, if old Goody Rumour can be trusted, had thought proper to put herself under the protection of a distinguished sailor who dropped anchor before her last summer at Richmond.’

Let them write of her. What did it matter? They had always applauded her or ridiculed her. An actress had to accept this. The famous were out in the arena to be shot at. She had long ago learned that.

In response to his brother’s request the Prince of Wales called at Petersham Lodge on his way to Windsor. Dorothy was nervous. It was one thing to play on the stage before this gorgeous personage; to receive him as a guest in the house of which she had recently become the mistress was quite another matter.

But she was soon put at ease.

‘George, I want to present my dearest Dora to you.’

He bowed – the famous bow which was said to be the most elegant in the world; his eyes were alight with admiration.

‘You are even more beautiful than William has been telling me,’ he said.

‘Your Highness…’

‘Oh, come, we are brother and sister now. William would wish it. Is that not so, brother?’

William, beaming love and good nature, was, he said, the happiest man in the world to see that the two whom he loved beyond any others had taken to each other on sight.

‘Not,’ he declared, ‘that I conceived it possible to be otherwise. Two such good and charming people! It was George who put me on the right lines, you know, Dora. But for him I should not have won you yet.’

‘Then we must both be grateful to His Highness.’

‘You flatter me… both of you,’ said the Prince lightly. ‘But I forgive you because it does me so much good to see two people as much in love as you two are. It is exactly so with my own dear Maria, whom you shall meet.’

The Prince’s eyes filled with sentimental tears and Dorothy was surprised because she had heard that he kept Mrs Crouch whom she knew slightly, for the woman was an actress who had played at Drury Lane and she had boasted of having a place in Berkeley Square and some £5,000 of jewellery which he had given her. Rumour had it that Mrs Fitzherbert was furious because of the liaison and it was only when she threatened to leave him that he had broken it off. There were even now rumours about Lady Jersey who seemed to attract him in the oddest way. She fascinated yet repelled; she was an extremely sensuous woman, wicked, some say, and as different from Maria Fitzherbert as it was possible for two women to be. It was true that the Prince wanted to keep Mrs Fitzherbert; but he was by no means faithful to her as he was implying now. But he did so with such a show of sincerity that it seemed he must believe it to be true.

Considering all she had heard of him Dorothy felt uneasy, fearful that William who seemed to have such a high opinion of his brother might take his cue from him.

But now the Prince was determined to be charming; he was completely at ease; he talked to Dorothy of the theatre and plays and playwrights of which he was very knowledgeable.

He told her how he admired her voice and begged her to sing for him; and she amused them both by singing the song which she often sang after playing
The Spoiled Child
with its line:

‘What girl but loves the merry Tar?’

The Prince sang it with her. His voice was good, quite strong and very pleasant. He was rather proud of it and said that as she had sung for him he would sing his favourite sentimental ballad for her.

It was
Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill
– a tribute to the absent Maria.

Then they all sang together and Dorothy forgot the high rank of her visitor, for indeed he behaved like an affectionate brother-in-law.

When he rose to go he expressed his regrets that he must do so.

‘I have to go to Windsor,’ he explained to Dorothy. ‘You can imagine nothing more dull.’

And he spoke as though she were indeed a member of the family.

When he had gone, William seized her hands and cried: ‘Well, what do you think of him?’

‘He is charming… even more so than I had expected.’

‘He is the best brother in the world. And he is fond of you already. I told him he must be or I should never forgive him.’

‘It is good to see such affection between brothers,’ she said; and she thought: he is affectionate by nature. I believe I am a very lucky woman.

But the lampoonists and the cartoonists were not going to allow Dorothy to enjoy her happiness if they could prevent her doing so. There was scarcely a day when some piece about her did not appear in the papers. Behind her back her fellow-actors and actresses called her ‘The Duchess’.

There was veiled criticism of her desertion of her children. One of the morning papers came out with the statement:

‘To be mistress of the King’s son Little Pickle thinks respectable, and so away go all tender ties to children.’

This was something which upset Dorothy more than all the coarse allusions to her life with the Duke.

She took the paper to Hester when she went to see the children and asked if she had seen it.

Hester had.

‘What if the children were to? I know Dodee and Lucy are not old enough, but what if Fanny should?’

‘Fan is bad enough now,’ said Hester. ‘She talks of you and the Duke constantly and is piqued because you have not taken her to live with you. You know Fan’s temper.’

‘That’s what I fear – that they should see these comments… and heaven knows they are everywhere.’

‘What of Richard?’

‘I haven’t seen him.’

‘He has taken it all very calmly.’

‘I never thought he would do anything else. I do believe he is glad to be rid of me.’

‘I think he was sorry to see you go, Doll, but he’s relieved that someone else is going to look after his children.’

‘I’m well rid of him. I often wondered how I could ever have wanted to marry him.’

‘It was not Richard you wanted, Doll. It was marriage.’

‘Mamma instilled that into us, didn’t she? And now I think it is something I shall never have.’ She sighed. ‘But I’m not going to allow this to be said. Richard will have to do something. He will have to make it publicly known that I have
not
deserted our children, that I am the one who is caring for them and that he is the one who has freed himself from his responsibilities.’

‘How can you make him do this?’

‘I am sure William can.’

William did.

He went to his lawyer William Adam and pointed out how the papers were abusing Mrs Jordan. He wished Adam to watch the papers and if anything was said which was actionable to be ready to take it on his behalf.

Adam’s advice was that Richard Ford should write to Mrs Jordan a letter in which he set out fully all that she was doing for their children. He would go and see Ford and advise him that it was a moral duty to do this without delay.

Ford agreed and Dorothy received a letter from him.

It ran as follows:

October 14th, 1791

To Mrs Jordan.

‘Lest any insinuations should be circulated to the prejudice of Mrs Jordan in respect to her having behaved improperly towards her children in regard to pecuniary matters, I hereby declare that her conduct has in that particular been as laudable, generous and as like a fond mother as in her present situation it was possible to be. She has indeed given up for their use every sixpence she has been able to save from her theatrical profits. She has also engaged herself to allow them £550 a year and at the same time settle £50 a year upon her sister. ’Tis but bare justice to her for me to assert this as the father of these children.

Richard Ford.’

She showed the letter to William who took it and gave it to William Adam. Adam promptly sent it to the
Morning Post
who published it.

When Richard Ford saw it he was astonished; he had written for Dorothy alone and was embarrassed for people to know that it was Dorothy who had taken on the responsibility of arranging their children’s future. But it was now clear to all that Dorothy, while becoming the Duke’s mistress, had by no means neglected her children, and it was said that had Ford married her – and after the respectable life they had led together he owed it to her – she would have remained faithful to him.

Opinion was veering round. Ford was going to be the scapegoat now.

He took action at once and left the country for France – scarcely the most peaceful of retreats at this time, with the monarchy dangerously tottering and where no person who did not wear ragged breeches and red cap was safe to go abroad.

Once Richard had gone the public lost interest in him. The famous actress and the King’s son were far more amusing than

Richard Ford.

The lampoons began to appear thick and fast. There was never a day which did not bring an allusion to them.

There were pictures of Dorothy and Mrs Fitzherbert together. ‘The pot,’ ran the caption, ‘calling the kettle black.’

The favourite story was that of the King sending for his third son and when he arrived at Windsor saying to him: ‘I hear you keep an actress.’

‘Yes, Sir,’ William is reputed to have replied.

‘Eh, what, how much do you give her, eh?’

‘A thousand a year, Sir.’

‘A thousand, eh, what? That’s too much. Five hundred… quite enough… quite enough.’

The story went on that the Duke wrote to Mrs Jordan telling her what the King had said, to which she replied by tearing off the bottom of a play-bill on which was written:

‘No money returned after the rise of the curtain.’

People pretended to believe the story; it was just one of the many coarse comments which were made about the lovers.

Domestic bliss

THIS WAS THE
happiest time of her life. She often wondered what her mother would have said, had she been alive to see her now. Would she have been satisfied? Perhaps. The Duke behaved in every way like a husband. He
wanted
domestic happiness; he was most content when they were alone together; and there was nothing he enjoyed more than to sit with her in the evenings and talk to her about his life at sea.

‘I missed it you know, Dora,’ he told her. ‘I was badgering my father to let me go back to sea. But now that I have you it’s changed. Rather a life ashore with my Dora than at sea, I can say to myself. Of course I could take you with me. Oh, no. Too many dangers. A storm blows up, men are swept overboard… Stab me, I couldn’t let my Dora face that. I’d die of fright.’

He liked to hear her stories of the theatre.

‘Always attracted me,’ he said. ‘I reckon that if I’d not been born the son of my father I’d have been an actor. The footlights… the rise of the curtain… and that moment when the audience are quiet… waiting. It never fails to thrill me. And I’ll never forget that moment when you came swaggering on the stage in your breeches… Sir Harry Wildair. I was yours from that moment. No one else in the world would ever do after that. I was determined, you know. I wasn’t going to stop pestering you until you said yes.’

He smiled at her tenderly – the lover, the husband, the protector.

Oh, God, she thought, I’m happy. Let this last for ever.

‘There’s no one to touch you on the stage, Dora. George said so. And George is the connoisseur of the drama… literature… oh, of everything. He says they go to see Siddons because they think they should; but they go to see you because they want to. You can trust George to put his finger right on the point.’

‘The King and the Queen favour Mrs Siddons, I believe,’ she reminded him.

That made him laugh. ‘Now you’re one of the family I shan’t mince my words about
them.
My father is less like a king than any king has ever been. Now, George when the time comes will be a king every inch of him. But my father… If you could know what life at Kew is like. The little farm there… and all the fuss he makes about how the butter is made and the dairy run. Oh, God, he’s like a petty landowner. He’s carried away by little cares about where a chair is and how much fat you eat or how much exercise you take, and he’s prudish in the extreme.’

‘Then what does he think of us?’

‘Even he sees it’s inevitable. He spoke kindly of you. He knows we can’t marry and he sees that since we can’t, this is the next best thing. If George hadn’t been the Prince of Wales he would have thought it all right for him to settle down with Mrs Fitz. But you see George will one day be King. As for the rest of us… there are so many of us that we need not marry.’

‘And if you had to…’

He was at her side, taking her hands, kissing them. ‘There is only one woman on Earth I would marry – and I consider myself married to her already. Dora, my lovely Dora, if it had been worth anything I should have gone through the ceremony with you, we’d have taken our vows before a priest. But it would not count. My brother Augustus’s case proved that. It would be called no marriage in the eyes of the State. That is the only reason why we have not gone through our ceremony.’

Dorothy said: ‘I do understand these things – and I don’t know how I can deserve your love and devotion to me.’

‘It’s simple,’ he replied. ‘Go on loving me. It’s all I ask. It’s all I command.’

So it was a perfect union, she thought – at least as near perfect as that between an actress and a Prince could be.

Yes, even her mother would be satisfied.

There was a feeling of expectancy among the Drury Lane Company.

Every ambitious young actress who thought she had a comic genius to compare with Dorothy Jordan’s but merely lacked opportunity and good luck was surreptitiously studying the Jordan parts and in many a little room in dingy lodgings near the theatre rehearsals of Wildair and Little Pickle went on.